


Take Me

by slipgoingunder



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1960s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Music, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bickering, Country & Western, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Smut, F/M, Huddling For Warmth, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Loss of Virginity, Mention of Canonical Character Death, Musicians, POV Kylo Ren, POV Rey (Star Wars), Slow Burn, Songwriting, THERE WAS ONLY ONE BED, an instance of face slapping, bit of a, but tender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:58:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 39,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22118041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slipgoingunder/pseuds/slipgoingunder
Summary: Every night, at 8:30 pm, Rey and Ben get on stage and pretend to be in love with each other. At 9:15, they walk off stage and the actual fireworks begin.Or: "60s country singers who hate each other (but not really) and find themselves in an only-one-bed, huddling-for-warmth type of situation."
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 752
Kudos: 1020





	1. ...if you would just show a sign

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bless_my_circuits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bless_my_circuits/gifts).

> This is not something I ever would have tried to write, but I will attempt nearly anything for K8, so here we are. I meant to post it pre-TROS, but I wasn't quite finished with it. 
> 
> I've done a ton of research for this — watching country music films, reading biographies of Waylon Jennings, Tammy Wynette, Johnny Cash and his manager, listening to tons of music, looking up period makeup and hair and perfumes and just...yeah. This has been going on for months. 
> 
> Think of this as inspired by aspects of Walk the Line and the [Mitch and Mickey storyline](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwLZfPPM7GQ) of A Mighty Wind.
> 
> Songs (I really suggest listening): (both performed by George Jones and Tammy Wynette)  
[Take Me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clI-wH_bVbQ)  
[ Something To Brag About](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYodum-PMUA)

DECEMBER 1969

They darken the house for the love songs; it makes the spotlights seem to burn twice as bright. Nix—_or is it Ematt?_ Ben can never remember—launches straight into the simple bass intro. This song needs no introduction. No sly back and forth as a lead-in.

"_Take meeee_," Rey warbles, drawing out a wider array of vowel sounds than one would assume you could extract from the word _me_, as Ben strums an E chord. 

"_Take me to your darkest room, _  
_Close every window and bolt every door._" 

Ben never breathes during her opening verse. She's capable of real bombast, but this song always starts with a light touch, her voice almost caressing the lyrics, like she wants him to lean in to hear her. 

He's actually heard these lyrics a hundred times, but it doesn't matter. It's his weakness—hearing her sing the words "take me," while looking into his eyes like they're the only people in the room. 

"_The very first moment—_" She practically whispers it.  
"—_I heard your voice_,  
_I'd be in darkness no more_."

The same clunky intro abruptly repeats in a new key, because of Hux's total lack of finesse and creative inspiration. Just that familiar ping of irritation snaps Ben back into performance mode for his verse. 

She backs off slightly from the wind screen of the microphone as he sings the response, pausing at the right moments to match her idiosyncratic phrasing. 

Rey tilts her head down, looking up at him under her false lashes, as if his words about crossing barren deserts and her smile being like heaven are both a revelation and her dearest wish. 

She takes the tiniest step toward him for the bridge.

"_There's not_ _any mountain_ _too rugged to climb_," they harmonize. Their voices are so different—they don't quite _blend_, but there's something electric in the friction, like they're being stitched together with the most delicate thread. 

Somehow Rey keeps moving in closer with every line. It's a mystery how she manages to gradually eliminate the space between them without ever letting the silky fabric of her dress touch the wool of his black suit.

"_Darlin,' if you_—" She takes a tiny inhale at the wrong time, like always.  
"—_would just show a sign_—" He moves closer.  
"—_of love, I could bear any lo-oss_." He never hits that melisma just right, but it adds a certain gruff charm. 

Rey wets her lower lip. Her lipstick always starts to wear off a little bit by the end of the set. 

"_Take me_," he croons to her, as she peers beneath the brim of his black cowboy hat into his eyes "—_to Siberia_." His lower register is prime tonight. The crowd is hushed.  
_"And the coldest weather of the winter time."_

He can feel her breath hitting his skin, just above the neckline of his shirt. 

"_And it would be just_—" her voice soars over the lyrics "—_like spring in California_." Her lips are maybe two inches from his.  
"_As long_—" closer "—_as I knew you were mine_." 

They breathe into each other for a moment, just before a final "_Take meeee_" in unison. It sounds like a long exhale. Or a sigh. 

There's this moment that happens every time they end this song, when they linger a beat too long on the last note, and they're looking into each other's eyes like a thousand people in a civic auditorium aren't watching them. 

It had happened on their one and only television appearance, four months ago. And ever since, they've had to play it out the exact same way, night after night, in front of a live crowd.

The same routine, every performance. They get almost close enough. She looks at him with wide, expectant eyes. 

And then he leaves her hanging. 

They both know it by heart.

The reverb on the steel guitar is still vibrating, suspended in the air over the stage. Rey's coral-pink lips are parted just enough. If he lowered his head a tiny bit, they could give their audience the kiss they've been anticipating since the first song in their set. 

Every night, the crowd waits for it, leaning in, holding their collective breath. 

Every night, Ben, himself, thinks it might just happen. Like spontaneous combustion. 

So he's not sure why tonight, he's still waiting, even though he's performed this about a hundred times during this tour. He's not sure why he bends his head down just a half inch more, angling just a bit to the right, letting the faintest trace of his upper lip brush against Rey's mouth. Maybe he just has to see what would happen if he jammed his foot between the door and the frame before it slams shut for another night. 

Except nothing happens because Rey makes a tiny surprised noise and jerks her head out of the way and the sustained note fades out and maybe Hux or the bass player or someone off-stage clears their throat and Rey immediately bows and waves and overcompensates with a smile so big, you'd think someone had just presented her with a trophy. Or a giant piece of pie. 

Ben quickly bows his head and tips his hat as the audience applauds. No one expects him to smile—Rey projects enough happiness for both of them—and he follows her off stage into the wings to wait for the encore. 

The second the heel of his boot hits the part of the wooden floor that demarcates "backstage," Rey whips around and smacks him across the cheek. It's not a hard slap. But dammit, it stings. He can't say he's altogether surprised, because of the—

"That was low. Even for you."

There's a round of chortling and a whistle from Dameron's bandmates, waiting in the wings. 

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about, Sunshine." Ben keeps his face carefully composed in an emotionless expression.

"Messing with me on stage? You think that's funny?" 

"Solo has never found anything funny," Dameron's drummer mutters from behind a thin cloud of cigarette smoke. 

Rey ignores it. When she's focused on something, she acts like the world narrows until everything else is a blur.

"I'm not goin' back out there. You finish the set by your damn self!" She turns on her heel, muttering, "You've been wantin' that anyway."

The crowd starts clapping rhythmically to lure them back to the stage and Hux and the boys start playing the _boom-chicka-boom_ rhythm of their upbeat encore, knowing that Poe Dameron is supposed to start his own set in two minutes and there's no time to dawdle without bearing the wrath of "Captain Charm," himself.

Ordinarily, Ben would love the chance to play his solo act. He's been itching for it over the last four months. But their band is barely capable of playing through the set as planned and they're supposed to end on a high note and get the crowd warmed up for Poe Dameron's cheerfully vacant lyrics and uninspired melodies.

Any deviation from that and he’d never hear the end of it from Ransolm, let alone their label. 

Swinging his custom Martin D-35 guitar around, Ben struts back out onto the stage by himself, while the band repeats the same bar, over and over again, waiting for Rey. 

"Let's see if we can't get Miss Sunshine Jones back out here on stage for one more tonight." It's the most he's said into the microphone all night. “It’s her song, after all.”

He turns his head and cues the first verse, praying that Rey re-emerges in time for the second.

“_I’ve got a real important job in a large office buildin,' _  
_Ridin’ people in an elevator”_

He glances left. 

“_I drive a fifty-seven Chevrolet with busted tail lights,_  
_Burned out valves and a leaky radiator_"

He's never been great at selling these goofy lyrics by himself. He can't play any character other than "Kylo Ren." Somehow it only works with Rey as his comedic foil. And she's still nowhere to be seen.

He presses on with the verse, glancing at the wings.

“_I wear a twenty dollar suit,_  
_I bought from J.C. Penney’s,_  
_Back in Nineteen Sixty-two._”

He can only see Dameron, taking a swig from a bottle and looking around nervously. 

“_But I’ve got —_  
_somethin’ to brag about_” — no Rey —  
_Something’ to brag about" _— still nothing —  
_Somethin’ to brag about in you._”

The band hits the key change and repeats the intro bar once. 

Ben listens for the sound of her heels on the floorboards.

There's only the sound of the snare drum. 

They have no choice but to repeat the bar again. 

Just as Ben scrambles to improvise substitute lyrics that don’t involve a “swingin’ mini dress,” Rey saunters out from the opposite side of the stage, grabbing the microphone from the stand.

“_I’m a short order cook_  
_At an all-night cafe,_  
_Down on Eighteenth Avenue and Twelfth Street._”

She bounces her hips back and forth to the beat, like she’s done absolutely nothing wrong, as Ben steps back from the empty microphone stand, seething. 

“_I wear a swingin’ mini dress_” — she bounces particularly provocatively in his direction —  
_That I made for myself,_  
_From mama’s kitchen curtains_  
_An' old bed sheets._”

She two-steps in Ben’s direction, a sweet expression on her face, and there’s nothing he can do to escape her, while keeping up the facade of some kind of lighthearted, forever-blooming romance. 

“_I’ve got seventeen pages_  
_Of Top Value stamps_  
_And one old pair of shooooes._”

That's when she does it. Something she's never done in the sixty—_seventy?_—sets they've performed together. She reaches out her hand like she's going to touch his face. He doesn’t quite flinch fast enough, as she swipes his hat from off the top of his head. 

“_But I’ve got—_  
_Somethin’ to brag about in yooouuu!_”

With that, she pops his hat on her own head. 

The crowd erupts in cheers. 

Ben can only stare while Rey continues with the bridge. He's barely pretending to strum the chords. 

She knows full well—_full well_—that he doesn’t perform without his hat. 

_Ever._

She continues singing, voice bright and clear, like everything's perfectly fine.

He's a full beat late on his entrance, nearly growling the lyrics in her direction.

There’s a quick, terrible guitar solo from Hux and Ben takes the opportunity to swing his arm around, grabbing for the hat, but Rey ducks out of the way. It's almost like she’s had some practice evading large men. 

“Gimme my fuckin’ hat,” he whispers once Hux is in the spotlight and they’re out of range of the microphone. 

“Stop bein’ a jackass.”

“Stop being a little brat and sabotaging our damn _set_.”

When she turns around to get back in front of the mic, he stealthily lifts his hat from her light brown bouffant and returns it to his own head. 

Ticked off as he is, he can’t help but notice how the audience is eating up this little “quarrel.”

Rey has always been particularly good at playing up this dynamic. Luckily, he's only required to be the put-upon straight man. No one's ever expected more of him.

“_So let's get married,_  
_In the not-too-distant future_—”

They’re practically spitting the words at each other into the microphone.

“—_we'll rent a little flat on Twenty-ninth Street_.”

There's a drop of sweat rolling down her temple. He knows his face is as red as a ripe tomato.

“_We won't have a thermostat,_  
_A big, long Cadillac_”—it’s more shouting than singing—  
“_But we'll have a love that's true._”

He pitches his voice at the bottom of his register:

“_And I’ll have—somethin' to brag about,_”

Rey hollers back.

“_Yeah!— Somethin' to brag about,_”

They’re practically nose to nose for the last line, sung (screamed) in unison:

“_Somethin' to brag about in yoooouuu!_”

To Ben’s chagrin, the audience goes nuts, while they both breathe hard, glaring at each other. 

He tilts the microphone out of range and says through gritted teeth, “Do _not_ touch my hat again.”

Rey gives him a hard look. She doesn’t respond well to angry ultimatums, but he can’t help himself. 

_He doesn’t play without his hat_. Period. She knows it. 

After a final bow and a stiff wave, the emcee, a big, round Dallas DJ one-hit wonder named Snap Wexley, runs out to introduce Dameron. 

"Let's hear a big ol' round of applause for Kylo Ren and Sunshine Jones, everyone—"

Rey jogs offstage, but Ben is hot on her heels. She doesn’t get to storm off twice in one night. He pulls on her shoulder as soon as they reach the wings. 

“Don’t touch me.” She doesn't turn around.

“You need someone to teach you a little goddamn _respect_ for other performers. Stop thinkin’ you’re so special.”

“What’re you gonna do?" She twists around, cheeks flushed. "Replace me with some other girl fresh off the turnip truck? Those are _my_ songs we’re singin.’ _Not_ yours. They’re mine—and Finn’s.”

* * *

Rey is used to fighting. Defending herself. Usually she's good at picking her battles, knowing when to dig in deeper and when to back off. Maybe this one wasn't worth it, but it's too late.

Her partner is gripping the neck of his guitar hard enough to make his knuckles go white. Poe’s bass player rushes past them, but Ben pays him no mind. His eyes are on Rey. And they’re burning. 

So what if she'd taken it too far this time? So had he. And it's silly to get so fired up over a dang _hat_. 

“You’re right," he says, affecting a slightly cooler, more hurtful tone of voice. "I don’t write novelty songs. I don’t write _duets_." He spits out the word like it's poison. "I write real songs about working men.”

Rey can't hold in the tiny bit of incredulous laughter that comes bursting out of her mouth.

“What you know about about bein’ a ‘working man’ I could just about fit in a thimble.” 

Rey watches his chest heave, like he’s debating whether or not to go another round of insults.

“Evenin’ folks!" Poe's warm, round voice booms through the venue's speakers. "How ya’ll doin’ tonight? I'll tell ya what, it's never a dull moment on the bus with those two—uh—_lovebirds_!” Poe’s band kicks off his opening tune and Rey turns away to watch him perform. Or at least to face in his direction while pretending to watch him perform. Sometimes Poe invites her back on stage if he's in a generous mood. And it angers Ben, which is like the cherry on top. She can feel him fuming behind her, but she doesn’t move a muscle. 

She’s never much cared for men who can’t get a handle on their tempers. 

And, anyway, he’s too used to getting his way on account of his family, much as he wishes everyone would forget who they are.

She counts to ten before she hears Ben Solo's heavy footsteps, as he storms off in the direction of the dressing rooms. She gets almost clear into the thirties before she hears the sound of breaking glass against a cement block wall. It's a wonder that after three months on tour, he still has things to smash.


	2. But I can't stop trying...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let's back up a few months. 
> 
> Rey copes with being the only woman on the tour. Ben proves to be a tough nut to crack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mentioned that this fic is a bit non-linear. This chapter takes place a few months prior in the timeline. 
> 
> I just really wanted to include a scene in a diner as a semi-tribute to Walk the Line.
> 
> On the jukebox: [ Smokey Robinson and The Miracles - Ooo Baby Baby](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RDUYOSpH9w)

SEPTEMBER 1969

"You oughta act like one of the boys," Kaydel “with a K,” Connix “with a C” suggests, as they share a Virginia Slim outside a club in Printer's Alley, the night before Rey leaves. "That way, they won't see you as easy _or_ a challenge. They'll just ignore ya and probably fart in your face or somethin.' " 

She passes the skinny cigarette. 

“Sounds like paradise.” Given the comparative conditions at Plutt’s farm, Rey isn’t being completely insincere. She listens intently as Kaydel confides that Poe Dameron almost certainly gave the clap to a girlfriend of hers who saw him at the Masonic Temple in Davenport.

“There’s no point in competing with the band rats.” She twirls a perfectly curled lock of blonde hair between her fingers. “These guys like _variety_, you know? Sometimes they stash two or three girls in different motel rooms and just run up and down the stairs all night.”

“They do?” Rey exclaims, forgetting to hide her naïveté for a moment. Not that Kaydel—with her expertly applied eyeliner and suede jacket—would mistake her for anything but a country bumpkin. She knows about sex. Just not _that_ kind of sex.

"Yeah!” Kaydel laughs. “Listen, I know it doesn’t sound like the most glamorous advice, but at least you won't get knocked up on the road."

"Or catch whatever Poe is carryin.' " Rey takes a drag, doing her best not to cough, and trying very hard not to think about who, on this tour, might stash girls in motel rooms. 

She can’t stop her mind from conjuring up a scene involving Solo’s heavy footsteps pounding up and down an open metal staircase at 3 a.m. outside Kansas City. What does it matter if that’s the kind of thing Solo does? Why does that thought make her stomach tight?

Kaydel giggles gleefully. "Lord deliver me from _that_."

* * *

Maybe being "one of the boys" wouldn't seem all that appealing to most young women, but being a tomboy has always come natural to Rey, anyway, so it's a good fit.

Of course, sometimes, she pulls on a pair of high-waisted pants and a dull button-down blouse after a show, only to see the drummer for The Resistance leading a young woman in a bouncy ponytail and a tight sweater into a broom closet down a back hall. 

It's not that she wants to go in any broom closets. But it'd be nice to be..._considered_ for a broom closet once in awhile. 

Rey's ponytail doesn't bounce, though. And she couldn't fill out of a tight sweater without sticking wads of tissues in her bra, anyhow. The only person who even seems to notice that she's a girl is Solo, and he's only looking at her like that out of contractual obligation.

Maybe that's why she feels utter _relief_ when Poe Dameron offers to share his booth with her at the diner next to their motel after a matinee in Minneapolis. He buys her a ham sandwich and a chocolate ice cream soda and she lets herself relax into his tales of tour debauchery and his overly attentive manners. They don't call him "Captain Charm" for nothing. Come to think of it, she's never heard another soul call him that after two weeks of touring, but he manages to live up to the moniker all the same.

Or maybe she's still a little bit starstruck because Poe Dameron's first single, playing at a low volume over the finicky radio in her parents’ living room, had accompanied the last happy memory of her childhood. Songs can stick with you that way. Same with voices.

Poe laughs easily. He brushes the the dark curls out of his eyes and steals a french fry from Rey's plate without asking and the casualness of it all her reminds her of Finn. It feels like what other people mean when they talk about missing someone back home. She's never had much of a home to miss, but she's real good at listening to other people describe those kinds of things. Especially in country and western songs. 

Rey only minds a little bit when Poe occasionally squeezes her shoulder. He's a friendly person, and friendly people touch each other affectionately, don’t they? Even if this is their first real conversation? Anyway, it’s nice to be noticed by someone so obliging. 

Unlike, say...the tall man sitting at the counter, dressed in dark colors, hunched over and scribbling furiously in one of those black and white composition notebooks. 

Solo is so careful not to touch her that it almost feels insulting.

He's never stolen a french fry because he's never bought her dinner. He's never offered her a ride to the next venue in his glossy black Firebird because he always insists on driving by himself. It's like he goes out of his damn way to avoid her when they're not performing. 

She could've let him alone at the counter, with his lukewarm cup of coffee and a plate of toast pushed off to the side, and a cigarette burning in his left hand. It's only because Rey sees him do this thing: he turns his head a little bit—not all the way, no eye contact. He just turns it down and a little to the right, the way you do when you're interested in a conversation that doesn't pertain to you, and that extra half inch rotation seems to give you extra-powerful hearing abilities. 

Except maybe he does have a reason to be curious, because Poe Dameron's favorite topic of conversation—aside from stories about Poe Dameron—is "Kylo Ren." Rey listens to a litany of grudges, observations, and accusations about Solo, all delivered with Poe's good-natured affect: his failed "outlaw" gimmick, the mysterious circumstances of his family tragedy, his numerous visits to a certain “doctor” back in Nashville. 

Truth is, Rey hasn't quite decided how she feels about the man whose knee is currently bouncing like a twitching rabbit, who's somehow guilty of terrible things but is also the hopeless romantic who looks deep in her eyes every night, declares his undying devotion to a good woman named Sunshine Jones, and really seems to mean it. 

That's the worst part. 

Because when they're on stage, or just rehearsing—when there's music between them—it's like something wild worms its way up from her gut and grabs hold of her throat. And suddenly she can see this whole other part of him. And maybe he's just a good actor, playing a role he despises. But in those moments, it's as if there's not a handsomer, stronger man in the entire world. 

So, _yes_, she could've just waited for the waitress to come back around and fill up her water cup. But an ice cream soda, and french fries, and a ham sandwich have a way of making a girl thirsty. So Rey slides out of the booth—noting that Poe Dameron watches her leave—and marches up to the counter, her hand clutching the dimpled glass. She doesn't have to lean over the counter less than two feet away from Ben Solo and set down the cup with a loud _thwack_. 

But she does it anyway. 

He doesn’t turn his head at first, but his eyes move right, focusing on her hand. And her wrist. Making their way on up to her bare shoulder. 

It makes the tiny hairs on her forearm stand up straight to have his eyes on her like that. Maybe because there’s no distraction from it—like singing in front of a thousand people. The hustle and bustle of the busy cafe doesn't divert his attention in the slightest. No, Solo’s eyes linger on her skin—too tan and freckled and dotted with a couple ugly scars that she usually hides with a cardigan. Rey watches his throat bob as he swallows. 

“Evenin,’ ” she says, modulating her tone to be polite, but not friendly.

He still doesn’t fully turn his head.

“Enjoying yourself, Sunshine?” He says it to the light blue laminate countertop, peppered with tiny flecks of dark gold. 

Rey holds in the _hmrph _sound she wants to make. Best not let him know that he’s capable of getting under her skin with simple indifference. 

“Sure am.” 

He gives the slightest nod as he picks up the coffee cup. His hand—_is it shaking a tiny bit?_—makes it look like part of a child’s tea set. 

“Something troublin’ you, Solo?” 

“Making friends, I see.” He takes a gulp of coffee and sets the cup back down onto the saucer with a clatter.

“Poe was kind enough to buy me dinner. I suppose I ought to expect a diamond engagement ring any day now.”

“No, but you might want to inquire about the exchange rate on that sandwich.” Solo finally turns his head. 

“It’s more than you ever offered me.” She rests an elbow on the counter. "And we're supposed to be in _love_."

“You want me to pretend to buy you a ham sandwich?” He takes one last drag from his cigarette before mashing it into the ashtray. 

"No," she says, craning her neck to see the display of desserts on his left. "But I wouldn't turn down a slice of pie. I'm still hungry."

He's not exactly smiling. But it's something akin to an amused expression, at least. She takes the opportunity to look in his eyes, under normal lights and without his hat on. Or those darn sunglasses. Of all the parts of him—she’s become very familiar with the ones she can see, at least—his eyes might be her favorite. Deep, rich brown, and big. Well, not any bigger than anyone else's eyes, if you really compared, but they seem so full of pain and longing that you can't take in much else on his face at the same time. 

Solo furrows his brow ever so slightly. For some reason, it sparks a little pop of excitement in her chest.

"Cherry?" The word—a perfectly innocent word—rolls off his tongue in such an unusual way. 

Rey lets herself grin, ever-so-slightly. "Lemon meringue, please. Cherry's too sweet."

He shrugs and then makes some slight beckoning gesture that the lady behind the counter responds to right away (even though Rey had been standing there, trying to catch her eye for over a minute) and she orders her pie. 

"And they say romance is dead," she says, running her index finger along the rim of her still-empty water glass. 

"Well, I'm sure you can get two verses and a chorus out of me buying you a slice of lemon meringue pie." Maybe he notices the slightly offended look on her face because he adds, "You're a very...resourceful songwriter."

" 'A country song's nothin' but three chords and the truth.' " 

Solo seems to flinch at that, and it takes a second or two longer than it should've for her to remember that she's quoting his late father. It’s strange to think of Han Solo as a man—someone’s actual “dad”—and not a god-like voice on the radio.

Rey's mind grabs for an apology or a condolence or a non-sequitur, but before she can decide on one, the waitress sets the heavy dessert plate down on the countertop. With two spoons.

"Thank you," she says—half to the waitress, half to Solo. 

He stares at the pie for a few seconds. The meringue towers a full two inches over the light yellow lemon filling. 

"All you had to do is ask." He taps his fingers on his notebook. He's a fidgeter when he doesn't have a guitar in his hands; she's noticed that much, at least.

Rey waits for him to pick up one of the spoons, but he doesn't. 

"It's as simple as that, huh?" She lets her weight rest on the vinyl-covered stool. "I should ask you for things more often."

"There's your song title right there: 'Easy as Pie.' " 

"And here we thought we couldn't write a song together. You been holdin' out on me." She picks up a spoon, but he still doesn't reach for the other one. 

"You can have this one all to yourself," he says. "You have a real talent for the 'Nashville Sound.' " It feels more disappointing than it should to hear that; it's clearly not a compliment.

Maybe it's that slight pang of displeasure in her gut that prods her to push on him a little bit. 

“You workin on something?” She leans over the counter to get a better look at the black ink-covered pages of his notebook.

“Just...thoughts.” Solo closes it. His large hand rests over the black and white speckled cover, concealing it almost entirely.

“You plannin' to show me at some point, or just spring it on me during a performance?”

“I thought you like to improvise.” He leans an inch closer to her. “You never sing any line the same way twice, you know that?”

“Maybe I’m just always lookin’ for the better way to sing it,” she replies, noticing the smaller and smaller gap between their shoulders. 

“I never met anyone who could make six syllables out of the word ‘_you_.’ ”

Something about the way he says _you_ makes her want to hear it again. 

“If the spirit really moves me, I could make seven.” She slices the edge of her spoon into the smooth, white pillow of meringue, feeling it slide effortlessly through the delicate fluff. 

“I'd like to see that.” 

She glances up from her plate, meeting his eyes. The clatter of plates and chit-chat of the customers seem to fall away. There's a jukebox playing a Smokey Robinson ballad that she hadn't even noticed before. His hands aren't fidgeting anymore. He's just...looking.

Her spoonful of pie is still hanging in mid-air a few inches from her mouth when Poe's hand invades the narrow space between them, grabbing the plate off the counter.

“Ooh, key lime. My favorite,” he remarks, taking a bite as he walks back to the booth.

They both turn their heads, only slightly incredulous, watching him return to his seat and dig into the meringue. Rey lets out a little sigh, before raising the custard-covered spoon to her lips, but she can't help but notice the intensity of Solo’s stare in Poe's direction. 

"You're really not gonna show me what's in that notebook?" She's always been good at defusing—or at least redirecting—other people's anger. "Is it because it's a bunch of lyrics about how Sunshine thinks Kylo is tall, and strapping, and the handsomest man she's ever seen?"

Maybe the tactic works, because Solo snaps his head back around to Rey. He opens his mouth and a funny sort of look passes over his face for a second. Then he looks back down at the composition book.

"It's not—" he exhales sharply, knitting his eyebrows together and finally looking away from Poe. It’s an awfully serious response to a joke. "They're not duets. You wouldn’t—"

"I see," she says, tightly. "No point in wasting your time on new material for the two of us, right?"

"You're putting words in my mouth—"

"I’m filling in the blanks."

He rolls his eyes. 

"No one told you to fill in any blanks. All we need from each other is to show up on stage every night. That's it."

"Great. This torture will be over for you soon enough." She hops off the stool. "Better go catch the last of my pie."

She walks back to the booth, half-hoping that he might follow her. Touch her gently on the shoulder. Apologize. Explain why he acts like this. Hot and cold. Or maybe lukewarm and freezing.

But there isn't any touch on the shoulder. 

Because this isn't one of Leia Organa's songs, where her man does her wrong, but she loves him so much, she can’t help but take him back every time he says he's sorry. 

Not that Solo is Rey's "man," or anything. He's just very good at pretending to be one for forty-five minutes every night. 

The fact of the matter is, she's used to settling. There've only been a couple times—in her entire twenty years of living in the world—that she's come close to getting something she's wanted. There's always a generous helping of disappointment to go along with anything good. 

When she slides back into the booth, some of Poe's bandmates have joined him and eaten most of her pie. As if to prove the point.

"You're fuckin' nuts if you think Blue Sweater was a Raquel." 

Ah, yes. _This_ argument again.

"She was!" The bass player jots something down on a scrap of paper.

"You'd need a goddamn magnifying glass to see her tits. No offense, Rey."

_At least you won't get knocked up on the road_, she sighs, in her own brain, not for the first time. The lemon curd starts to taste a little bitter on her tongue.

"I'm crossing Raquel off my list. Tomorrow, I'm on the hunt for a Jane and then you'll owe me seventy-five bucks." 

"She wasn't a Raquel," Rey says firmly, reaching over Poe's drummer for one of the last remaining bites of pie. "She was maybe a Tina Louise."

Poe laughs approvingly and tosses his napkin on the table. And just like that, she understands how she's going to survive this tour. Sometimes a pale imitation of friendship is enough. 

"See boys?" he says, relaxing back into the padded bench seat. "I toldja it'd be great to have a girl on the road. Pass me the rest of the pie, will ya?"

Poe picks up the spoon as the bass player sends the plate sliding across the width of the table. Just before it hits Poe's outstretched fingers, a massive hand reaches down to intercept it. Rey hadn't even noticed Solo towering over the table, let alone approaching it.

Before anyone can make a move to stop him, Solo grabs hold of the plate and casually pushes it into the side of Poe's face, letting it drop back onto the tabletop with a clang, loud enough to turn the other diners' heads.

He remains rooted to the spot, as Poe wipes his fingers down his cheek, through the mess of puffy egg white and and yellow custard, and looks up at his assailant. A small piece of crust falls off his chin. 

"—the fuck was that?"

"Now order her another piece," Solo says, coolly. 

Rey's a quick thinker; she doesn't get stunned into silence very easily. But In the time it takes for her to blink a couple times and let herself exhale, Solo turns his back and walks away from the table, like he has absolutely no fear of retribution. 

He doesn't even let the door slam behind him. 

Rey leans forward to peer past a still-dumbstruck, pie-covered Poe, through the window blinds, watching Solo walk toward his Firebird. It's parked a good distance away from the other cars in the lot. Not that she's expecting it, but he doesn't look back. 

She orders the slice of pie herself. Cherry, this time.

* * *

The truth is, it had happened once: a couple weeks into the tour, with that last note reverberating in the air. Rey had looked at him with those hazel eyes, wide and sparkling under the bright lights, all needy and curious. He must have played the part of the dark Lothario too well because she'd thrust herself up on her tiptoes and smashed their lips together, practically knocking him on his ass. 

As soon as they got off stage, still breathing hard, Ransolm had grabbed her by the elbow and admonished them, "You make 'em beg for more—and _don't_ give it to 'em."

It’d been the look on Rey’s face that haunted him. Ben could never quite determine if it was terror or embarrassment or shame. Maybe she'd been out of earshot when she sprinted for the dressing room and Hux had exclaimed, with no attempt at discretion, "Gol-_ly_ did she think that was _real_?"

But probably, she'd heard every word, along with the laughter that followed.

From that night on, they would always linger on that moment before the kiss, like a record that reaches the end of Side A and keeps quietly spinning in the locked groove for eternity. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of these bits about touring life come from Waylon Jennings' autobiography. 
> 
> Late 60s sex symbols: Raquel = Raquel Welch. Jane = Jane Fonda. 
> 
> [The Nashville Sound](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville_sound) was, indeed, not a compliment, coming from Ben. 
> 
> I don't know why I always need to give Ben Solo very specific cars, but I do. [1968 Firebird](https://classiccars.com/listings/view/1084973/1968-pontiac-firebird-for-sale-in-colgate-wisconsin-53017).
> 
> The quote about "make 'em beg for more, and don't give it 'em" is actually from the musical [Gypsy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gypsy_\(musical\)).
> 
> Next update, we'll see how Ben and Rey *met,* and I have to admit, I really like how that chapter turned out.


	3. Take the ribbon from your hair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben and Rey's on-stage quarrel spills over to the tour bus. 
> 
> In a flashback, we see how they became a duo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading everyone! I know this is pretty different than my usual modern AU smut-banter, but writing this was so fun for me, especially this chapter. 
> 
> A few people have asked about a playlist and I might go ahead and share mine, when I have a moment to clean it up. 
> 
> And no, I haven't read Daisy Jones and the Six yet, but it's on my Kindle! I just don't want to be too influenced by it before I post the rest of the chapters. I'm very excited to read it, though!
> 
> The song in the second part of this chapter (the flashback) is "Help Me Make It Through the Night." It was written by Kris Kristofferson, and recorded by many people, including [ Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPCWWlW9oaM). 
> 
> I think **@delia-pavorum** sent me that song when I started this fic and I was like, whoa there is some innuendo in these country singles, WOW.
> 
> The first part of the chapter takes place directly after Chapter 1 (it's the same night). The second half is a flashback.

DECEMBER, 1969

Ben Solo stuffs his composition notebook in the pocket of his wool overcoat, freeing up his hand to lift his guitar case. There's an ink pen—the kind that makes a mess—shoved between the pages he's been mulling over for the last three days, adding a solitary word here or there, making no real progress. But the pen makes it feel like he's always on the verge of a breakthrough. It's a comfort to pretend that he just might write a new chorus between Green Bay and Grand Rapids.

Maz likes to keep them all out on the road as much as possible. It's a volume business for her—signing up her clients to criss-cross the whole damn country, with hardly any regard to distance and geography. 

On the tour before last, someone else had carried his bags, but not because "Outlaw" Kylo Ren was any kind of big deal on his own. (What kind of "outlaw" needs help with his luggage?) Opening for Luke Skywalker had offered some perks. But that's all over now.

At least tonight isn't so bad. The next city is at least in the same basic _region_—albeit the fucking freeze-your-ass-off-in-December region. No matter that it's a five hour drive and the money they'll make from the promoter will barely cover their expenses on the road. That's _if_ they even get paid. 

Which is what the gun is for. 

It's probably the most valuable thing Ben ever learned from his father. Five dates on this tour—so far—they were nearly stiffed, but for that .357 Magnum insurance policy. 

On evenings like this, when there's a long ride ahead of him, with a dozen assholes crammed inside a second- or third-hand bus with barely working heat, he thinks about the night he refused to get on the little private plane. About pointless shouting matches that became last words and makeshift memorials and Leia's tight face, barely holding it together. 

When the memories won't let him be, he listens for the soft rattle of the pill bottles in his pocket. Just knowing they're there—little yellow Simcos and Speckled Birds. A tranquilizer on one side, an amphetamine on the other, plus a vitamin. Over-and-under.

Ben moves past the bench seats, arranged in various configurations at the front, where Dameron's buddies play cards around a little table. Ducking his head beneath the low, curved ceiling, he feels a little too large, a little too conspicuous. It's not much better than a Greyhound—actually Ben suspects it might be preferable to buy a damn bus ticket and sit among strangers if he can't drive his own damn car. 

He's _not_ looking around for her, but he spots her right away. She's hard to miss, curled up on a little bench on the driver's side, leaning her head back against the frosty window pane, with a few sheets of unfolded paper in her hand and a thoughtful expression. 

Ben knows exactly what those papers are. 

Letters. From Finn. 

Lyrics, chords, ideas for harmonies. Maybe there's more to those letters. Rey gets this odd half-smile on her face sometimes when she reads them. Like she can escape the grueling reality of the road and the man she actually has to perform the songs with, just by looking at the Finn's words and letting her imagination take her away. 

Back to Jackson, Mississippi. Or Winchester, Virginia. Or wherever it is that she actually came from. He's never quite been able to pin her down on that. All her stories have this vague, half-dreamed quality—big on charm, short on specifics. 

She glances up when he approaches, but her eyes don't linger on him at all. In fact, her face forms a bit of a scowl. 

Ben takes a single step to move along past her. She hasn't even changed out of her dress, which is a sure sign that something's not right—that he shouldn't press on it. He should definitely walk by without a word. Just let it be. 

Only Ben Solo can't ever let anything be. There isn't any scab he hasn't picked at too soon and made it bleed all over again. Still happens at thirty-fucking-years-old. 

"So you _are_ capable of showing up on time," he mutters, just loud enough to be heard over the idling engine. "Just not on stage."

Rey doesn't turn her head, although he detects a slight waver in her slouchy letter-reading posture.

"You need something, Solo? Or are you just talkin' to yourself again?"

Ben racks his brain for some face-saving reason to keep standing there and continue being indignant, but all he comes up with is:

"Your harmonies in _Lock, Stock, and Teardrops_ were flat tonight." 

They were. Barely, but still. 

"Well, thank you for bringing that to my attention. I noticed something, too. You might wanna read your precious charts for _Keep the Change_ because you're playing the wrong chords on the verses."

"No," he says, slowly and deliberately. "I was just trying to make it more musically interesting." He lets his guitar case rest on the floor. "All your songs have the same three chords. If you need me to teach you a fourth one, let me know."

"Did it ever occur to you," Rey says, sitting up and leaning forward, "that I can only use those three chords because your vocal range is so damn limited, we can't go higher or lower?"

"That's—"

"Ooooh." Poe Dameron swings himself up the stairs and into the aisle in front of them. "What's all this racket on my bus?" 

Ben swallows down a mouthful of venom. 

"We got ourselves a quarrel," says one of his Resistance lackeys, lighting up a cigarette. 

Rey rolls her eyes. 

"My little lovebirds? Just who I need to see. The hat thing?" He jabs a finger into Rey's papers. "You're gonna do that every night. It's the perfect segue into the Charm Offensive. Really got the audience goin' again."

"Absolutely not—" Ben protests.

"I'm so glad you think so, _Captain,_" Rey interjects, winking at Dameron. _A goddamn wink_. "In fact, it'd be even better if I passed his hat to _you_, while you make your entrance."

Ben stares at her, until she tilts her head a bit further up to meet his eye. Neither of them blink. 

"Always thinkin,' this one," Poe nods approvingly in her direction. "She writes the songs, she comes up with these bits? Really smart for a gal." 

She gives him a tight little smile and goes back to her letters. Ben catches himself waiting a beat too long before shifting the weight of his bag and guitar and continuing to his usual spot in the back of the bus, listening for the rattle of pill bottle again as he steps around Hux's outstretched feet.

"You remind me of Leia Organa," Dameron continues, standing over Rey at an angle that strikes Ben as invasive. "Smart. Good, solid songwriting chops, strong-willed." He pauses, glancing back at Ben. "Got Ben Solo desperately glomming onto your talent because he doesn't actually have any of his own—"

The desire to march back up the front and take a swing at him is overwhelming, but months of back-and-forth petty bullshit has led Ben to the conclusion that it's a trap. Dameron is smaller, but he's got six guys backing him up; Ben has Hux. Why would his own fucking bandmate bother to get up and take a damn side in a fistfight when he could stretch out across three seats with a _LIFE _magazine and ignore the whole thing? 

Stupid, petty fights are an occupational hazard of any tour featuring more than two men. The presence of a woman—even one who hasn't expressed more an a polite interest in anyone aside from her absent writing partner—doesn't help matters. He'd feel sorry for Rey being the only woman on the tour if she didn't get on better with the boys than he does. She can shoot a pistol better, trade insults better—hell, she can play guitar better them most of them, even though she doesn't play on stage. 

As soon as the tour started, Dameron had assessed Ben's weak spots and correctly settled on Rey as the most effective provocation, even when all she's doing is huddling up in her military surplus coat with her letters. 

* * *

SUMMER, 1969

She's taller than the rest of them. They must've seen close to thirty different singers today. She's holding a beat-up guitar with a braided strap, which Snoke immediately orders her to put down. (Officially, he uses the moniker "Jim Snokey" because it makes him sound like a good ol' boy, but Ben never calls him that. He knows exactly what he is.) 

"You're just singin,' girl. We already have a guitar player." He nods his pale, wrinkled face at Hux. "And Ren," he adds with a smirk.

"Name's Rey," she says, pulling the strap over her head and setting the instrument down on one of the chairs against the back wall of the studio.

"What are the odds this one knows the tune?" Ben mutters to his bandmates, loud enough for her to hear.

She looks him square in the eye and replies, in a southern drawl he can't quite place, "Oh, I know it, all right."

He can tell she's not a professional. She doesn't sing backup or cat food jingles, waiting for her big break. Her hair is tied up in a ponytail with a light blue ribbon and the way she's fidgeting with the skirt of her plain yellow dress, it's like she's wearing someone else's skin. It's insulting that Snoke would even waste his time with this.

"You ever recorded before?"

"No, I—"

"How long have you been in Nashville?"

"Just got here three d—"

"Did she fall off a goddamn turnip truck?" he shouts at Snoke, who's busy lighting a cigarette. "Is this some kind of joke?" 

Ben feels his vindictive streak surfacing, stoking his anger over being "reworked" as one-half of a duo. He'll be singing silly love songs to a stranger for at least the next year, or until Snoke decides his penance is over. Might as well be a fucking death sentence.

"Actually," the girl says, lifting her chin slightly, "it was soybeans." 

"Excuse me?" Ben says, turning his gaze back on her, almost in disbelief that she hasn't left in tears.

"The truck? It was full of soybeans. And I didn't fall off. I jumped." Ben opens his mouth to respond, but not a damn thing comes out. "Nearly landed on my feet, too."

The bass player guffaws as Rey steps up to the microphone, clearing her throat softly. 

"Can we get on with it?" Hux whines. 

Ben feels himself breathing a little harder than he should, considering that he's barely moved his feet in the last three hours. 

He could just toss her out of the studio. He could come up with meaner insults that would probably make her cry. He could throw something at a wall and scare her off. 

But he can already tell she doesn't frighten easily. Not from that kind of thing, anyway. He looks her up and down again. _Yeah, that's not her weakness at all._

This one? She's afraid of something else. 

Ben nods to Hux and the bass player—some session guy who's name he couldn't be bothered to remember—and they play a couple bars of the intro he's heard twenty-nine times today. The girl faces him, almost head-on, twisting her hands in the skirt of her dress, maybe because she's used to playing the guitar and she's not sure what else to do with them. Ben had been strumming along with the band, but this time, he decides to just sing the first verse. Really give this hayseed his full attention. 

It's almost like setting your hand down in front of a big black ant, just to find out what he'll do: go around or climb over you.

"_Take the ribbon from your hair_," he sings, lifting up his hand, brushing it almost against her head and grabbing for the light blue satin that's holding up her innocent little ponytail. She flinches slightly, but stops herself from moving her head away. He tugs at the frayed end of the ribbon until the bow comes undone, staring at the expression on her face. There's wide-eyed shock—an indignation that she desperately tries to paint over with something serene.

But he knows he's already under her skin by the time he sings, "_Shake it loose and let it fall_." Her light brown, shoulder-length hair hits her bare shoulders, and she's gripping the fabric of the skirt in her fists, like the cotton is the only thing holding her back from socking him in the jaw.

"_Lay it soft against my skin_." He almost murmurs it, his lips about a quarter of an inch from the microphone and his fingertips grazing her collarbone through the thin fabric of her dress. The ribbon glides to the floor, but he doesn't see it land. His eyes are tight on hers and he can almost see her entire body vibrating. Maybe with anger. "_Like the shadows on the wall_."

He should really give her more space breathing room at the microphone but he doesn't back off.

To his surprise, neither does she. The girl grabs a hold of his hand and firmly pushes it off her shoulder, with a tiny, tight grimace.

"_Come and lay down by my side_," she sings, her voice quivering a bit on the low note, charmingly honest. "_Til the early morning light_." She leans in, meeting his gaze. "_All I'm takin' is your time_." There's a nervous energy winding around every word she sings.

He joins her with a harmony, listening to their voices blend:

"_Help me make it through the night._"

He takes a deep, silent breath while she takes a quick, audible one.

"_I don't care what's right or wrong_," they sing in unison, holding the note together. "_I don't try to understand_."

Ben moves his head a tiny bit closer, taking the lead in the vocal. "_Let the devil take tomorrow._" She still doesn't give an inch, as he sings to her: "_Lord, tonight I need a friend._"

He slides his left hand up the neck of the guitar, and joins Hux on the D chord, accompanying the girl on the last verse. He adjusts his body a little bit, finding the most unobtrusive angle for the instrument between them. 

She closes her eyes and sings like she's heard this song a million times before:

"_Yesterday is dead and gone, _  
_And tomorrow's out of sight._"

Ben joins in, letting the girl find a gentle upper harmony. It's the first time today they've played through the last line. Ben and Hux repeat the instrumental on the last few bars, just because it sounds right to give it a nice round finish, and he and the girl sing the last two lines into the microphone one more time, their noses nearly touching.

"_And it's sad to be alone_." She looks at him with these enormous, needy eyes and he's distracted by how their voices fit together so perfectly, even though, by all rights, they shouldn't. She's all smooth reedy tones and he's all ragged edges from singing this same damn tune all day, but _Christ_, there's a rightness to it. 

"_Help me make it through the night_." 

Her face is so near to his that he can see that she's not even wearing any makeup. It's been years since he's seen a girl up close without a thick streak of eyeliner and false eyelashes. It's almost unnerving. 

"You sang that real nice," says the bass player, as the last note fades into the ether.

The girl breaks into a grin and gives him a little nod.

"Easy to sing a tune as simple as that," Ben mutters, taking a step back from the microphone. "It's not exactly Brian Wilson, is it?"

"Thanks," she says, unfazed. "I wrote it."

He blinks.

"What do you mean, you 'wrote it?' You said your name was—"

"Rey." She grabs the sheet music from the stand in front of the microphone and holds in front of Ben's face. "Rey Jones. Me. And my writing partner, Finn Storm." He looks at the names printed on the paper and then back to the girl. "We sold three songs to New Empire this week."

Ben slowly turns his head toward Snoke, who's sitting languidly on a chair in the corner, legs crossed. The man takes a drag from his cigarette and says nothing.

"You?" Ben whips his head back around to the girl. "_You_ wrote a song about needing a man to help you 'make it through the night?' " 

"Yeah. Me and Finn wrote it together, but I can't read music, I just hear it in my—"

"You're not even a singer," Ben says, whipping his head back around to look her up and down again, the mystery of her lack of polish suddenly coming into focus. "You're a songwriter." There's a little more disdain in his voice than he intends.

"I've done a little performing on my own, back in—well, the thing is, Finn and me—we cant...we can't be on stage together as a duo. You'd be doin' his part."

"I-I would be—" he chokes on the words. "His part? _His _part?"

"That's right," the girl says calmly, bending at the knee to retrieve her ribbon off the wooden floor.

"Do you know—" Ben takes two steps toward her as she rises from the ground, "—who the _fuck_ I am?"

She's tall, but he's taller. And she flinches at the word _fuck_.

"I do." She straightens her back. He takes another step closer.

"Tell me who I am."

He looms over her, silently daring her to back off or call his bluff.

She doesn't blink.

"You are...a spoiled-rotten, disrespectful, son of a bitch and you couldn't pick out a catchy melody if your life depended on it. And you're not fit to lick Finn's shoes, let alone sing his part."

No one makes a sound.

Ben feels himself shaking with rage, his heartbeat racing but uneven and choppy, like an animal trying to gallop for the first time. A million terrible words cycle through his brain, but he's too addled to muster up a response. He pats his hand over his pocket, feeling for the little cylindrical security blanket. 

"We need to do something about her name." Snoke finally rises from the chair. He walks over to their impromptu stand-off and raises a finger toward her upturned, flushed face. "She needs a lady's name." Ben watches as Snokes crooked forefinger pushes against her jawline and the girl shakes her head away. "A man don't wanna fuck a woman with a name like 'Ray.' " Something hateful stirs in his gut, but Ben doesn't move. "You got a nickname, girl?"

She swallows and breathes out. 

"Finn calls me 'Sunshine,' " she says, with a note of reluctance. "It's a joke we have because I'm actually very—"

"How 'bout that, Ren? You love sunshine," Hux interjects with a laugh. "That's why you're always wearing those sunglasses. Can't get enough of it." 

"A ray of sunshine to cleanse his sins away for the churchgoing folk?" Snoke crosses his arms over his chest, regarding Ben with a familiar look of bored disdain. "Well? Do we believe that Outlaw Kylo Ren wants to fuck Miss Sunshine Jones?" 

Something sharp and bitter roils under his skin. It's an old tactic of Snoke's, this sort of casual humiliation. He likes to do it in front of women and kill two birds with one stone. 

The girl curls her fist around the ribbon, and for a second, Ben wonders if she'll wind up and belt Snoke square in his pointed little jaw. But instead of popping him one, she opens her mouth.

"What if _I_ don't want to fuck Kylo Ren?"

"This has nothing to do with _you_, girl!" he roars back at her. "_Sunshine_ wants him. Not you." Snoke leans down, his beady eyes darting back and forth across her face. There's a little scar on her cheek that Ben's sure he's cataloguing along with her other flaws. "You're nobody. Don't forget that."

Snoke makes a show of slamming the door so hard the snare drum vibrates. 

The girl's eyes well up and glisten, but she doesn't let a single tear fall. Ben finally allows himself to exhale.

"You're too pale, Ren," Hux says, as he casually plays around with a melody he didn't write. "Maybe you need a little sunshine on your face."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, musicians sometimes had to arm themselves in order to get paid on the road. 
> 
> The private plane is a reference to ["the day the music died"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Music_Died), which you can read more about from a number of sources. Waylon Jennings was there that night (he was Buddy Holly's protege) and gave up his seat on the plane that would later crash. 
> 
> The specific pill references are also from Waylon Jennings' memoirs. He and Johnny Cash had some very wild times, but they also didn't consider themselves drug addicts because they'd get the pills from "doctors." But yes, basically everyone was on uppers and downers all the time. 
> 
> The offhand comment about Brian Wilson is basically a reference to Wilson’s innovative Pet Sounds / Smile era songwriting. 
> 
> A few people have asked about how Finn fits in. More of his story will be coming, but I did want to share one point of reference: in 1968, [Harry Belafonte and Petula Clark performed together on television and she touched his arm, causing a scandal.](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/apr/02/how-petula-clark-and-harry-belafonte-fought-racism-arm-in-arm)


	4. in my mind, we can conquer the world...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the present: Rey reads a letter from Finn on the bus. In the past: Ben does Rey a favor, and our would-be lovebirds find themselves on verge of an awkward encounter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song: [ You and I, by Stevie Wonder](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOW2UfvWWAE).  
*fun fact, this was the Obamas' wedding song.
> 
> Timeline note: The first and lasts sections are in the current timeline (December). The other two scenes are flashbacks. From this point on, we'll mostly be done with flashbacks.
> 
> Oh and I guess a content warning — we are getting to the "only one bed/huddling for warmth" bit of the fic and the cause of it is kind of a cruel practical joke with some inferences to sexual assault or non-consent. That said, there is nothing non-con or dub-con in the fic at all, just some 60s-era jerks who think it's funny to make jokes about it. I hope that makes sense, I just didn't want to worry anyone.

DECEMBER, 1969 

They're only on this drafty old bus because of Ben and his smashed up Firebird. Before he'd collided with a lamppost that "came out of nowhere," they'd had a mostly functional tour caravan: a loose collection of a half dozen cars pulling up to greasy spoons and motels with flickering neon signs. Sometimes the boys would let Rey drive, mostly on account of her being the sober one. 

They'd had no idea about her lead foot tendencies. 

That all stopped a couple weeks back, because Solo can't be trusted to get himself (and only himself—he'd never let anyone else in his car) from point A to point B without smashing something to smithereens. Maz had bought a retrofitted Flxible Starliner "from Elvis," although upon further investigation, it'd turned out to be merely one of three buses used for The King's entourage—and they'd treated it about as well as one might imagine. Maz had simply removed the bed in the back and installed a comically large bench seat, covered in vinyl upholstery ("lasts longer," Maz had said). 

Everyone still refers to it as "the bed," although it mostly functions as a place to crash when someone's motel roommate hangs a tie around the doorknob. 

Truthfully, Rey had kinda liked the caravan. At least she'd only had to put up with four loud, sweaty guys at a time; now she's stuck with about a dozen. 

Ironically, the only man on the bus who doesn't stink like a pile of old socks is the one she can't even look at right now. Solo smells annoyingly good. Sometimes on stage she leans in extra close and lets herself breathe deep.

She thinks his cologne is called "Agua Brava." She'd found an advertisement for it in a magazine about a month ago while she was killing time in some town in southern Illinois. The ad had said it's supposed to call to mind a walk in the woods or pine needles—stuff she doesn't normally associate with Ben Solo. But there's something lovely and familiar about it: mossy—almost _green_, if you could smell a color. And he does have some tree-like qualities, physically speaking. 

In fact, the discovery of Agua Brava had led her—for mysterious reasons—to spend her little bit of pin money on a bottle of Wind Song at a drugstore last week. It'd never really occurred to her before now that washing up with a bar of Ivory Soap wouldn't feel like enough. 

_Enough_. 

Enough of _what_, exactly? An enticement? 

For who? 

_Solo? _The man who operates at two speeds: angry and aloof? Oh, except for when they're sharing a microphone and pretending to find each other irresistible. Then he adds a third setting, because apparently it's hilarious to mess around with her feelings in front of a thousand people, just because he can.

And the pills just dial it up even further. Yeah, those are special nights. 

They remind her too much of "Uncle" Plutt on a bender. Not that he could ever afford pills, but the booze did the trick nicely. 

The one thing the bus is good for is escaping into a paperback, or curling up on the seat with Finn's letters, and replacing the memory of Plutt's grotesque triple chin with Finn's smile and his kind eyes and really just his whole face. It occurs to her, a lot—how fun this whole adventure could be if her friend was here and she didn't have to be a certain way with the boys and another kind of way with Solo and a whole other type of person on stage. It's exhausting to be _easy-going_ and _thick-skinned_ and _strong but innocent_ and _sweet_, all at the same time. 

Not like anybody ever called Rey "sweet" before this tour. She's never had much reason to be sweet to anyone, especially not men. So it's a little bit funny that she's so good at playing "Sunshine" on stage every night, opposite a man who's only pretending to possess actual loving and kind feelings toward a woman. 

Thing is, he's pretty convincing at it. Sometimes he even seems to have her a tiny bit fooled. Like she could swear she's seeing the real Ben Solo when he sings to her, deep and soft and looks at her like there aren't five hundred other women in the audience ready to leap up on stage and take her place. But no one has ever acted that tenderly to her in her real life, so it's hard to tell the difference. 

> _Hello Sunshine!_
> 
> _Had to beg Sam to flip the channel over to NBC (YOU try getting three members of the Funk Brothers to turn on the Max Rebo show) but I saw it. I just about jumped off the couch and yelled. _
> 
> _YOU DID IT! We did it! _
> 
> _You wore a DRESS. Between that and the makeup...I really had no idea you even HAD so much hair!_
> 
> _(ok ok you looked beautiful and the singing wasn't bad either, although I wish they'd let you play your guitar.) _
> 
> _You're doing Take Me in D, now? It's hard to hear Kylo Ren singing my part, Rey. Or do I have to call you Sunshine all the time now by legal decree of James C. Snokey? (I made up the "C" and it stands for creep.) Solo still making you crazy? Have you thought about offering him some grass?_
> 
> _Missing your sass (I rhymed this time, you owe me a nickel),_
> 
> _F_
> 
> _P.S._
> 
> _I need to ask: _  
_Did you plan that almost-kiss?_  
_Are you going to do that every night? _  
_Whose idea was it?_

Rey and Finn have talked on the phone a few times, but they'd agreed to keep writing letters. Phone conversations just evaporate into thin air, but she can hold letters in her hand. She can read them whenever she's feeling low. They feel like proof—like hard evidence of something good and pure, when everything else in her life comes and goes. She's read this one maybe twenty times, even though it's shorter than the letters Finn writes about his adventures working in Detroit. 

But this letter...maybe it just feels good to know that someone's proud. That anyone else in the world is looking out for her. 

And maybe there's a funny little inkling in her gut when her eyes pass over those questions in the post script about Ben Solo. Questions she'd been mindful not to answer when she'd written back. 

Rey catches herself drifting into almost-sleep, her head dropping down before snapping back up. Real rest is usually impossible on the bus, but tonight she feels her herself slipping into a cool, dark place, blocking out the noise from the Poe and the boys as they take turns changing the lyrics to old drinking songs into—well, to call them double entendres would be a shade too polite. Hux is reading a gossip rag somewhere in back. Snap is snoring away a couple rows behind her; _good lord_, the man can sleep through anything. Solo is—doing whatever he does when he withdraws to the back of the bus, probably writing a list of all the things he hates about "Sunshine" in his composition notebook. 

She hugs her oversized jacket around her, tucking her knees up close to her chest and surrenders to sleep, fantasizing about the nice warm motel bed she'll have in Grand Rapids in a few hours. 

* * *

NOVEMBER, 1969

There’s a couple extra pages folded into the envelope this time. It’s not unusual for them to send ideas for lyrics back and forth, but this is actual sheet music. Professional-looking. Not tabs—a full piano accompaniment. 

> _Haven’t recorded the demo yet, but see if you can get one of the session guys to play it for you? Counting on you to fix it!_

Rey looks up, as if there’s any possible way a perfectly amiable session musician would materialize out of thin air. But there’s only one other person in the studio at this hour: the last person she would ever want to ask. 

She could wait til morning, but the pages are practically burning in her hands. Swallowing her pride, she stands up from the stool where she and her guitar have been perched for the last twenty minutes, and walks over to the piano. 

It's impossible that he didn't hear her footsteps, but Solo doesn’t turn around. 

Rey places the unfolded sheets on the ledge above the keyboard, watching his eyes scan the pages. 

“What is this?” he says to the piano. 

“It’s a song.” 

“I can see that.” 

“It’s Finn’s song. He just mailed this to me and I—” She slows down to take a steadying breath and get ahold of her nerves. “Well, I was wonderin’ if you might—" she swallows "—play it for me.”

There's an uncomfortably long two-second silence.

“Play it for you?” 

“Yeah,” she says, trying not to grit her teeth at the way he’s drawing this out. “I can’t read music.” Her tone is higher and more strained than it usually is. “And I’d really like to know what it sounds like.” Another breath out. “He wants my opinion. Please.” 

Solo finally turns his head. 

“It’s not in my range—”

“But can‘t you just play the melody real loud with your right hand? You don't have to sing it. I can follow the lyrics and use my imagination.”

Maybe he senses how badly she needs this—how much it would mean to hear some piece of Finn—because he gives her a final, lingering glance, before turning back to the piano and placing his fingers on the keys. 

Solo takes another beat to look over the page—with more than a touch of hesitation—before playing through the gentle opening notes of the intro. It’s a ballad; she could tell that much from the direction “Slowly, with feeling” above the first measure. His large hands glide easily across the keyboard in a way that makes Rey a little jealous. She’s a decent enough self-taught guitar player, but she hadn’t noticed that Solo was quite so capable at the piano. Sight-reading, no less.

He takes a deep breath in at the end of the bar, and Rey finds herself almost flinching as he opens his mouth and begins to sing.

“_Here we are, on earth together,_  
_It’s you and I—”_

He’s using a slightly higher register. They’ve been modulating her songs down to accommodate his baritone, so she’s never heard him at the top of his range. And maybe he's straining a bit on the higher notes, but there's a refreshingly unpolished quality to his voice. So different from the country affect he puts on with "Sunshine." The sound seems to go straight up her spine.

“_God has made us fall in love, it’s true,_  
_I’ve really found someone like you.”_

Rey probably could've looked more closely at the lyrics before handing the pages over to him. Her eyes flit ahead to the top of the next page and she feels a minor panic at the way the words only seem to get more heartfelt. Mentions of “the love you feel for me” and being there “by my side to see me through,” lie in wait several bars ahead, as he gradually gives the notes a little more intensity and finesse, as the logic of the melody makes itself apparent at the end of the verse.

“_Well, in my mind_  
_We can conquer the world,_  
_In love, you and I…_” 

It’s not...well, she’s pretty sure the song is not about her. She and Finn have written a dozen love songs. And it’s just...not like that. Almost definitely. There’s a good chance the song’s about one of the girls Finn’s mentioned in his letters. 

But her cheeks start to feel very hot.

It's the way Ben plays it—digging into the deepest bass notes on the piano as the tension between the dissonance and resolution builds and releases, over and over again—it feels like _more_ than it should be. True, his voice isn’t smooth and velvety like Finn’s and he holds notes rather than attempting any runs or other vocal gymnastics. 

But that's not to say he sounds uncomfortable with the music. And if his voice doesn’t quite soar over the notes like Finn’s would, it’s a good enough approximation of what the song _could_ be. 

“_'Cause in my mind_  
_You will stay here always_"

Rey finds herself staring down at his hands—the way his fingers arch up over the keys, pressing down softly and then with more power when the momentum of the song demands that the music swell and boil over with emotion. And it's not just his hands: his shoulders and back move fluidly with the bass line—almost like he’s rowing in time with each measure—while his right foot handles the sustain pedal with the lightest touch. It's the first time she's ever really noticed how a piano player can use their whole body to bring a bunch of little black symbols to life.

_“In love, you and I, you and I_  
_You and I—_”

It must be Finn's melancholy chord progressions that make her throat tight and her eyes well up—not the performance. She's sure of it. 

Because she can just about _hear_ Finn—his phrasing, the jazz-infected grace notes and runs he’d probably add in as the song reaches a crescendo. 

The odd thing is how seriously Ben seems to take it. She's certain he's adding extra notes to what should be a simple arrangement on the sheet music. It's almost like he's compensating for the couple times he almost seems to trip over the simple, naked emotion of lines like: 

“_Because that's all that I am living for_  
_You see, _  
_Don't worry what happens to me_”

As the song builds to its climax, the line "You and I" repeating on the page, the melody lifting higher and higher, he stops singing altogether and throws his effort into the accompaniment. Maybe he finally hits the upper limit of his range. Or maybe it's because he can't keep going with it for some other reason. 

It's not until he lifts his fingers off the keys, with the final notes still vibrating from the piano, that he turns his head to look at her. She's not sure if Ben sees a lonely girl, missing her closest friend in the world, or a woman moved to tears over his rendition of a love song. 

But his eyes linger on her face for awhile, like he's trying to translate her expression into a language he understands. Only she's not sure she understands it, either. 

He stands up, gathering the sheet music into a pile and handing it over to her. Rey stares at Finn's name, printed at the top of the page, as Ben crosses in front of her to leave the room. It's the first time she's seen it alone, not linked with hers. And if a fat teardrop falls on one of the treble clef signs near her thumb, it's not because she's unhappy that Finn is doing so well on his own. She's glad for him. Truly. 

Even if it makes her feel more lonesome than—

"What was your opinion?" Rey snaps her head up. Her partner has the door open and his guitar case in hand. 

"Huh?" she replies, hearing her own voice shake with the threat of a full-on sob. 

"Your opinion?" he repeats, with a hint of caution. "The song." 

The plain truth of it is that it'll be a hit for someone at Motown and there's nothing that she could add or subtract to get it closer to perfect. Nothing to fix. It's deeper and richer than any of the ballads they co-wrote. There's no reason for Finn to come back to Nashville now. 

Ben is a good four yards away, waiting for some kind of reply. Even through her bleary vision, she can tell that he has that look on his face again: one part hopeful and two parts already disappointed.

She sniffles and folds the sheet music back into three parts, before sliding it back in the envelope.

"You got a nice voice, Solo." She wipes at her watery eyes with the back of her hand. "You should sing love songs more often."

* * *

OCTOBER, 1969

She's wearing a thick, homespun sweater over her nightgown when she finally answers the door. Ben's pretty sure Snoke had arranged for his secretary to take Rey shopping before the tour, but they only bought her clothes to wear in public. He wonders if she realizes how sheer the nightgown is, when she's backlit like this. 

“What’d you want?” She almost seems out of breath.

“Expecting someone?” He doesn't quite stop himself from looking around the room, behind her.

“I’m not gonna take off my stage dress and put on somethin’ else, on the off-chance you come knockin’ on my door. It’s hard enough to get laundry done on the road without changing clothes three times a day.”

“We said we’d fix the bridge in 'Golden Ring' and kill the last key change.” Ben finds himself pushing past her into her room, like there's a string tied around his waist that's pulling him inside. "It's too high. My fucking voice cracked tonight."

“And you wanna do this now?” she asks, shutting the door and turning to face him. There's something off—her cheeks are flushed—and she seems almost...agitated. "In here?"

“You’re awake, aren’t you?" He sets his guitar down on the bed. "You have something better to do at a quarter past midnight?”

Rey looks around the room, like she's searching for a reason they shouldn't. But she ends up spitting out a curt "_Fine_," pulling the cardigan tighter around her chest, and grabbing her guitar from where it's leaning against the wall. It looks like something a teenager would practice on. 

She flops down in the desk chair, which leaves him to sit on her bed. Gingerly, he takes a seat on the edge, positioning his Gibson J-45—he only uses it for messing around off-stage—over his knee.

Rey picks out the melody while Ben strums, although he puts little-to-no effort into it. He seems to be the only one who doesn't mind her playing guitar along with him. It's Ransolm who insists he'd been burned by "girl guitar players who're more hindrance than help." And Snoke doesn't like "the visual." But her playing is..._nice_ actually. Maybe a little bit clumsy, but soothing. Leia would call it "heartfelt" and mean it as a compliment. 

“I s’pose we could do something like—” she picks at a melody, face scrunched up with concentration. “That better?” He doesn’t answer. He _likes_ the visual, actually. “Or maybe we should be in unison there.” 

Ben feels his right hand drop away from the strings and onto the mattress. 

"Yeah," he mumbles. "Unison is..." Why _had_ it seemed so important to barge in here, ten minutes ago?

“So helpful, Solo." She rolls her eyes. "This was _your_ idea—"

And that's when they hear the woman's voice. It's not loud, exactly, but the walls in this motel must be thin as paper. Clear as a bell, no mistaking it for any other sound: there's a throaty, wanton _moan_ from the next room. 

And it doesn't stop.

* * *

DECEMBER, 1969 

There's the metallic bang of a slamming car door and Rey isn't sure if it's part of her dream or her waking life. With her eyes shut, she feels three things: 

First, she's been drooling again. The collar of her jacket is slightly damp. And cold. 

Second, they're not moving. Instead of the rumbling and bouncing of the bus with its substandard suspension, there's an eerie stillness. 

And most distressingly, it's utterly silent—no hum of the idling engine, no yelling, no rustling of bags and equipment being scraped against the vinyl bench seats as the musicians make their way to the front of the bus, for Pete's sake. 

Blinking her eyes open only confirms that something is amiss. It's not just quiet; it's empty. Rey has never been the last person aboard the bus. Someone has always given her a shake when they've pulled up to the motel. They've never _left_ her on the bus. 

Scrambling to get herself a little more vertical, Rey pulls herself up to the edge of the seat. A particular mix of panic and dread begins to worm its way up through her chest. There are a great many things Rey Jones can handle. _Has_ handled. But this specific sensation—the unbidden solitude—sets her heart racing. 

She turns her head to the right and left, even though common sense—literally, _all_ of her senses—are telling her she's alone. It's not until she whips her head around a second time that she sees him. His dark hair somehow shining from the light of the motel's pink neon sign. Rey sits up a little more, as if she needs the extra confirmation. 

Ben Solo has also been left here. And he's still asleep. 

There's something—a dark sort of inkling—that something's not right. She opens her mouth to shout something, and closes it again just as quickly. Because maybe she could just slip out, undetected and worry about Solo later. 

Pushing down the meddlesome sense of foreboding, she takes three big steps to the door at the front of the bus and gives it a hard push.

Call it intuition, but she'd known before she'd even touched the chrome handle that the door wasn't gonna budge. She jams her hand back into it anyway. 

All it does it make her wrist hurt.

Wheeling around, with a long sigh, she stares at Solo, sleeping peacefully on the vinyl-upholstered "bed" that spans almost the entire width of the back of the bus. His long legs are stretched out, leaving his feet dangling off the side. Three people could've been sitting there for the whole ride, and yet he's got no qualms about taking up the whole thing for himself. _Typical_. 

And then something catches her eye—something white with thick black lettering, attached to her coat. It's one of her letters, turned to the back and pinned near her chest, like a nametag. She snatches it off the fabric and stares at the words:

> **TAKE ME**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oooh flashback cliffhanger and current timeline cliffhanger? 
> 
> Just to clarify: I'm borrowing real songs, but that doesn't mean that Finn is supposed to literally be a 1:1 for Stevie Wonder. And it's interesting that there was a bit of crossover in terms of Motown artists covering the same songs as folk and country artists at this point. (There were a TON of covers, in general. Every famous country song was covered by everyone else!) 
> 
> But I also want to acknowledge that rock 'n roll has a [very troubling history systemic racism](https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1281-tracing-the-rock-and-roll-race-problem/). This is a much bigger issue than I could ever tackle in a reylo fic, but I just wanted to point that out here. 
> 
> I did a ton of research on tour buses from this era and I went with [this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuWZpzhz5AI) because there's a lot of photos and documentation of it, which will come in handy in the next chapter. This was further validated in Tammy Wynette's biography that mentioned her using nearly the same model. 
> 
> But tours sometimes did car caravans as well, as you can see in Walk the Line. One interesting thing—these tours remind me a lot of professional wrestlers traveling from one show to the next. They get there on their own, even WWE wrestlers, often carpooling and rooming with each other!
> 
> It's fun looking up vintage [colognes](http://www.basenotes.net/ID26120066.html) and [perfumes](http://www.basenotes.net/ID10212722.html)!
> 
> The Funk Brothers were essentially Motown's in-house backing band and there's a terrific documentary about them called ["Standing in the Shadows of Motown.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_in_the_Shadows_of_Motown)"


	5. no exit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are many places to sleep in a bus, it's true. But what if There Was Only One Blanket?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi friends,
> 
> This update is a bit later than I would like. I had a rough week that included a seemingly endless (and expensive) trip to the ER (everything's okay) that set me behind schedule. 
> 
> The chapter count might increase, simply because I wrote this in chunks without splitting it into chapters, so I'm still figuring that out. 
> 
> The first section follows on from the October scene in Rey's motel room in chapter 4, while the second section takes place in the "present" timeline in December, immediately following the very end of chapter 4.
> 
> There aren't any songs mentioned in this chapter, but I want to highlight a few that are on my playlist, albeit not from this time period. I'm a huge k.d. lang fan, honorary Canadian that I am, and I love her "Absolute Torch and Twang" album!  
[Three Days](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mConcVfHP_M)  
[Lock, Stock, and Teardrops](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwCAuulO6lE)  
[Pulling Back the Reins](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwGwzKbd9CI)

OCTOBER, 1969

“That better?” Solo's staring at her, barely listening to her picking. “Or maybe we should be in unison there.” 

The melodies she's sung a hundred times sound different paired with Solo’s voice instead of Finn’s, so the occasional adjustment has to be made. There's something about the way Solo wraps his voice around the notes. _Her notes. Her words. _His tone is lower, with more texture—more grit, really. Probably from all the cigarettes and late nights. 

“Yeah," he responds, after a few beats. "Unison.”

The cigarettes she's sure of. The late nights? Well, she doesn't care to think too much on how Ben Solo spends his nights. 

He doesn't need to know that when the man in next door started _entertaining_...loudly, twenty minutes ago, her mind had raced to work out which one of her fellow musicians might be the cause of all that noise. 

Specifically, if the cause might be Solo. 

It's not her fault that she'd just been lying there in her nightgown, staring at a piece of hotel paper covered in half-good lyrics, when the noises started. She wishes her ears hadn't perked right up. It's not as if she seeks out that kind of thing when she's minding her own business in the privacy of her room. 

But sometimes you can’t help it; it’s human nature to get real quiet and listen even more intently when you hear two people doing..._that_.

Especially if you've got an inkling about who might be the source of the occasional lower pitched grunt.

And even if you want to flatten your hands over your ears, you just can't, because you need to understand what in the hell happens in a man's bed that makes a woman beg like that. In that breathy, wanton, helpless way that makes Rey’s stomach feel strange and tight and curious. 

A little bit envious, if she's honest.

So instead, maybe her hands make their way down to her thighs and the hem of her nightgown. And maybe she finds that little spot that works her right up before providing the sweetest relief. She can't very well help it if her imagination conjures up her singing partner and his very sizable, very _capable_ hands. Or how much space he'd occupy in her bed if they were to share it. 

The fact that he's seated on that bed, right this very moment, isn't exactly helping the flush in her cheeks go down. Especially not when he keeps looking in her direction, all suspicious-like, instead of fixing the song he'd had such a problem with a minute ago.

“So helpful, Solo,” she snaps. He’s staring at her again, in this way that makes her glad her guitar is covering up most of her midsection. "This was _your_ idea—"

“_Ohhh!_" The woman's moan is dampened by the poorly insulated motel room, but it's plenty audible. "_Uh, uhhh, ohhh._" 

Rey stops strumming as her eyes shoot to the wall behind the bed. 

"Again?" she finds herself saying aloud, rather than in her own head.

"This happened earlier?" he asks. Rey doesn't at all care for the extra-intrigued expression on his face. 

"_Ah, ahh, aahhh—_"

"I mean, really, how many times can you even do it in one night?" 

Solo furrows his brow slightly, like he's absorbing new and amusing information about her. Was that a funny thing to say? More evidence of her scant knowledge of men? 

She doesn't know whether to bemoan his presence in her room—_on her bed!_—at such an awkward time, or rejoice in the fact that he couldn't possibly have been the cause of all that groaning.

Not that she should care. Not that she _does_ care what he gets up to off-stage. 

Except his eyes are still trying to read her face and she can't seem to force hers to focus anywhere else in the room. 

It's quiet—incredibly quiet—for about two seconds and then...a dull thump lightly knocks the bed frame against the wall. And another. Followed by another brief chorus of moaning, along with some positively feral male grunting.

Strumming real loud on the guitar would help drown it out, but Rey's hands won't move. She could make for the door, even though it's _her _room and by all rights, _Solo_ should be the one to leave.

But her legs won't move, either. 

They both sit, stock still, like some wizard put a curse on them, making them freeze in place and listen to every word while looking at each other.

“_Oh yeah...y-yeah, yeah, don’t stop. God, don’t stop…_”

She hadn't noticed the close proximity between the chair and the bed, when he first sat down. She doesn’t _want_ to hear this. At least not with Solo sitting on her mattress, their knees about a foot apart...

“_Ahhh_, _ahhh_, AHHH—”

...his dark eyes scanning up and down her face. Sometimes lower. Sometimes his brow quirks a little bit like he's critiquing the performance. Of _course_ that's a thing he'd be doing—judging the way two people make love. 

Although, to be perfectly honest, this probably isn't "making love" at all. 

"_Ah, ahhh, ahhh...oh f-fuck. Oh God._"

Rey feels her cheeks burn. She's not actually sure she's even heard a woman use that word under these—erm, _circumstances_. It's not like she can help but imagine what might be going on in there to cause that kind of cursing. 

Usually she kinda enjoys picturing it. But not with her singing partner watching _her_ picturing _it_...and maybe picturing something himself.

She squeezes the neck of the guitar until her knuckles turn white.

“H-how long can this possibly go on?” she wonders aloud. She drags her eyes away from Solo's amused face, but they end up gazing down at his hand, resting on the mattress, and, _Lord_, that doesn't help at all. 

“—_please, yes, y-yess, _yesss, _ah ahh—_” 

"_Get on your knees._"

Rey practically jumps out of the chair, knocking her guitar to the floor. The man’s voice is familiar, but she can’t quite place it. "This is—this is just…" She releases a loud exhale, pacing back and forth in front of the foot of the bed. "It's so—"

"Obscene? Titillating?"

"—_rude_. I should holler at them." She marches over to the beige wall behind the headboard pounds on it with the side of her closed fist, to no obvious effect. And she's not even sure if she's frustrated or relieved that the sounds don't stop. 

They seem to get louder. Two voices building to something together. Like a duet. Syncopated breathing and a steady, rhythmic squeak of mattress springs. A woman's melodic reverie floating above the man's bass line. 

Rey backs away from the wall, embarrassed to be so darn agitated in front of Solo. Waving her immaturity and lack of experience in front of him like a giant red flag. 

"_Ahhh_, _ahhh_, _AHHH_! _I'm gonna, I'm gonna—_”

Rey barely has time to squeeze her eyes shut before the woman next door is as good as her word. 

She bites her lower lip so hard she's surprised it doesn't draw blood. She looks down, surprised to find her fingers are all twisted up in the fabric of her nightgown.

"You okay there, Sunshine?" Solo is still seated on the bed, looking up at her. 

Brushing her hair back from her face, she feels a sheen of sweat on her brow. 

"I'm fine," she insists, voice breaking. 

"Clearly." 

"I mean it, Solo. That was just—" He raises his eyebrows and she can't find the right word to complete the thought. 

"Well, consider the source." He stands up, seemingly taller than ever before, maybe on account of the fact that she's barefoot, instead of wearing those painful heels.

" 'The source?' You mean you know who was—uh, doin' that?"

There's a distinct lack of space between her body and his. It feels different when there's not a microphone stand in the middle. 

"I think I should let you get back to—whatever it is you were doing before I knocked." The way he says it gives Rey a moment's pause. "It might help." 

“But you were so insistent about fixin’ the bridge two minutes ago,” she says, surprised by the tinge of disappointment in her voice. 

The way his eyes are focusing on her mouth makes the little hairs on her arms stand on end. Usually that dumb hat of his casts a shadow over his eyes on stage, but since he hasn't got it on now, she can see them so clearly. Deep brown reflecting the soft gold glow from the dim lamp in her room. 

She's looking at his mouth, too. The slightest trace of a smirk threatening to break across it.

The thin cotton of her nightgown brushes against his belt and if she shifted her hips a tiny bit more, they'd be rubbing up against him. For a breath or two, she's almost tempted, even though her body won't move. 

But his does. 

He leans his head down and she can't help her lips parting, even though all she can think of are Kaydel's warnings about band rats, Poe's case of the clap, and getting knocked up. And then his head dips lower to the left...and lower, still, like maybe he's after her neck, or her shoulder, or...

Solo picks his guitar up off the mattress. 

"Enjoy the rest of your evening, Sunshine." He ducks his head a little bit, walking past her toward the door. Rey stumbles back a step and wraps the cardigan around her middle. "Sometimes there's a Round Three."

She considers that for a few seconds as she watches him leave. 

"Hey!" she shouts, bursting through her own door as he's halfway down the exterior walkway. He turns around. "Who is it?" she whispers, as he takes a few steps back toward her. "Who's doing—" she nods at the neighboring room "—_that_?"

Solo glances over at the offending room, before looking her up and down in a way she wishes she hated. 

He leans into her right ear, making her feel a little tingly, and whispers:

"Hux."

She lets that information sink in while he walks back to his room, in that weird half-stomp/half-waddle way of his, having ruined any possible enjoyment she could wring from Round Three. 

* * *

DECEMBER, 1969

Ben comes back to consciousness with Rey standing over him. At first she almost seems like a vision, the way she's hovering with soft, dim light behind her. But a half second later, whatever little pang of excitement he'd felt at waking up to Rey's face—instead the back of a bus seat or the ceiling of a dingy motel room—dissipates. Because she's not there to watch him sleep like a guardian angel— 

"Wake up, Solo! We're locked in here." It might've been more effective to gently shake his shoulder or something, but she usually seems to go out of her way to avoid touching him. 

"W-what?" Ben says, groggily, reaching blindly for his coat. It's freezing. That's the first thing he notices. Well, besides Rey's face. 

She's already moving away from him by the time he starts to sit upright on the bench. She's pulling at the windows, knocking on things, trying to get something to open up. 

"Will you stop gawking at me and _help_ already?"

"What the hell are you doing?" he asks, rubbing his eyes. 

"Tryin' to find a way out off this bus, what does it _look_ like I'm doing?"

He takes a long exhale. Ben almost never falls asleep on the road. He hates leaving himself that vulnerable, especially in front of Dameron and his merry band of idiots. And even Rey, if he's being honest. 

But they're not here. Only her.

"Where is everyone?" The question feels idiotic, even as he's asking it. 

She's kneeling on a rear-facing seat, unleashing a stream of curses under her breath and digging her small fingers into the aluminum that frames the glass panes. 

"Where do you think?" Rey huffs out a breath as she pulls down on one of the windows. "They're all passed out inside their heated motel rooms." 

Ben looks around, even though there's no need to confirm it. 

"It's just us?"

She tugs again. "Ow!" Rey shakes her right hand a few times before returning to the futile effort. 

"I know you're probably used to sneaking out through windows, but you might want to try the door."

"I _did_," she growls. 

Ben slips his arm through the sleeve of his coat. It feels frigid as the Arctic, but it's probably unseasonably warm for Michigan in December. 

"Do you want a hand?" he asks, rising from the back bench and taking a few hesitant steps towards her. He's watched her struggle long enough. 

She glances back at him and mutters, "I got it," before whipping her head back around to the window.

Of course she wouldn't admit that she can't do it on her own. Of course she'd rather throw herself into a Sisiphian task, rather than let her guard down. She doesn't like to be touched. He knows this. 

And still—he finds himself leaning over, his hand reaching up for the edge of the window pane, his forefinger just barely brushing against her pinkie, and pulling down, jamming the window open at an angle.

"Hey!" she shouts, slapping at his hand and throwing her body against the seat, defensively. "I said I _got it._ You could try one of the five other windows, if you want to make yourself useful. It's freezing in here."

"You think I'm going to fit through one of these windows? I'm not even sure _you_ could."

"Then try the door."

"Believe me, I'd give _anything_ for the goddamn door to open right now," he says, not even bothering to mutter it quietly. He brushes past the seat, noting her eyes watching him, her mouth in a tight line. 

"You know, if you weren't in this stupid pissing contest with Poe, he wouldn't have—" 

"Me?" He whirls around. "You're blaming _me_ for this? You're the one acting like a starstruck school girl, laughing at his damn jokes so he'll invite you out on stage to sing one of your—"

"One of my what?"

"Your—"

"Say it." She gives him a wild look that says she's steeling for a fight.

"Your _novelty_ songs." 

"Songs that put smiles on folks' faces? Instead of makin' em feel so damn awful about their lives they wanna go out and drink their sorrows away? Like you?"

"I don't drink my sorrows away."

"You're right.” She tightens her expression back into something cold and dispassionate. “We both know what you do to take the edge off your sorrows."

He stares daggers at her.

“There's nothing wrong with pills that a doctor gives you!" How the fuck else is he supposed to tour non-stop for months on end? "And if you turned the dial on a damn radio now and then, you’d realize that there’s something out there better than ‘Stand By Your Man.’ ” 

But there’s no use arguing with her now, when they’re trapped in a goddamn bus, like a fucking Sartre play, and neither one of them has the luxury of storming off tonight.

Ben walks to the steps at the front of the bus and pushes experimentally against the right side of the door—where it should open, were it not locked from the outside. There's at least a small amount of give. It's something. Knowing Dameron, it could just be jammed with a piece of wood. 

He turns around to scan the driver's seat footwell for some kind of tool to pry it open. Amid the cigarette butts, stains, and ancient wads of chewing gum dotting the floor, he notices a bright white piece of paper—the only thing that doesn't look like literal garbage—at the top of the step. 

He crouches down—motivated by some latent sense of chivalry, maybe—to retrieve what appears to be one of Rey's letters. But after picking it up, he can see something's scrawled on the opposite side. And there's a pin hanging off of the edge. 

He flips it over. 

> **TAKE ME**

"What is this?" he demands, holding it up in Rey's direction. 

She stops jamming her fingers into the window frame and looks at the paper in his hand. Her face does—well, it's hard to tell in the dark, but it does _something_ before returning to a neutral-bordering-on-annoyed mask of indifference.

"It was pinned to my coat when I woke up," she says, simply, before returning to her task. 

"Pinned to your—" He looks at the paper, processing too slowly. 

"Just someone's dumb idea of a joke. It doesn’t matter." 

" 'Someone?' _Whose_ idea of a joke—"

"Who do you _think_, Solo?" Rey pushes harder against the frame. "They locked us in a freezing cold bus. Together. You think this was an accident? It's a stupid prank." 

He can almost hear Poe’s cackling, ringing out like a cymbal crash, as he stands up straight again, crumpling the letter in his fist. 

It's enough that it's the dead of winter—the fact that it’s a mild night for December is just a lucky coincidence—but it's the goddamn _note_ that does it. Putting it on her coat. 

That's what makes his fucking blood boil. 

That's what makes him step in front of the door, angling his right shoulder toward the latch mechanism. 

_Fuck Poe. Fuck his stupid yes-men hangers-on, pretending to be musicians_. 

He pounds his shoulder against the door with a heavy thud. 

_Fuck his shitty music_. 

Making a fist, he pulls back his arm and releases the full force of it onto the window, barely noticing the pain.

"Ben!"

_Fuck the way he dangles opportunities for stagetime over Rey’s head and then turns around and locks her in a bus as a fucking joke. _

Again. Harder. It makes a loud, bright clang, but doesn't break.

"Ben, _don't_—"

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see her scrambling up to the front of the bus with her arm outstretched. 

_Fuck the fact that despite all that, the label prefers him. Leia prefers him. _Rey _prefers him._

The next time his fist connects with the glass it cracks, but doesn’t shatter. 

“_Ben!_ Stop it!” 

His fist is already drawn back for another impact with the door when Rey throws herself in front of it, screaming, “Don’t!”

He hadn’t felt the skin on his knuckle breaking open into an angry, red gash, or the visible dent in the metal body of the door. It’s odd how adrenaline and fury can override the body’s natural impulse against self harm. 

It’s not the first time it’s happened. 

It’s not the first time it’s happened in front of someone else. 

But it hasn’t happened in front of her.

There’s a heavy breathing in the stillness. At first, he’s not sure if it’s him or Rey making the sound. 

Sometimes this part lasts a minute; sometimes it lasts five seconds: the realization and regret that inevitably follows a spiral of rage and breaking whatever happens to be accessible to him. Even if it’s his own body. 

Rey stares at his wounded hand, not stating the obvious for a good five seconds. 

And then…

“God, you’re bleeding—”

That’s when the pain kicks in. It’s the same as when a little kid falls down and doesn’t cry until his mother starts panicking. 

“It’s nothing,” he says, sitting himself down on the driver's seat, while looking at the bright red blood pooling around his knuckles. “It’s—fine.” But his voice cracks and Rey looks down at her oversized coat hanging over her shiny dress, and digs in the deep pockets, before pulling out a dull white handkerchief. It's not dainty or frilly or monogrammed. It looks like something that would belong to a man.

"Let's go to the back," she says, squinting at his injury, "there's more light and you might have glass in there." 

They make their way towards the large seat in the rear—the "bed"—where he’d been sleeping, and Rey orders him to sit near the window where the parking lot light is streaming in, mixing with the cloud-diffused moonlight. 

"What happened over there?" she asks, kneeling on the seat and reaching for his hand. She's not shaking, or panicking. Almost like it's not the first time she's had to take care of some idiot's self-inflicted wound. 

"What does it look like happened?" Ben turns away from her to face the window, as if that will grant him a modicum of privacy. His hand throbs. "_Shit!_ Shit."

"There's a giant padlock holding the doors together—"

"You could have mentioned that thirty seconds ago!"

"Jesus, Solo! I didn't think you were gonna try and bust the door down like the Incredible Hulk!" Her fingers feel cold and dry against his skin, providing a momentary distraction. "I thought you'd...I dunno, pry it open or do something with the hinges?"

"Ow! Stop—"

"Just let me take a look!" She cups her hands to her mouth and breathes on them to warm them up, not that it's likely to help much. 

He squeezes his eyes closed. Pain, he can handle. He can subject himself to it and feel stronger. 

But the way she's putting pressure on the wounds (_plural_) around his fingertips suggests that this is going to be a bigger problem than a makeshift handkerchief bandage and a couple hours of healing time can address. 

"Don't fall apart on me, now," she says, downplaying the severity of the injury with the casual tone of her voice. "I rely on this hand every night." 

He breathes in and out a few times, allowing himself a few more seconds to believe that a Band-Aid will do the trick, not that they have one. 

Ben opens his eyes. Rey is a lot closer now, examining his fingers with a gentleness he doesn’t deserve. He fights the urge to pull away, to shield her from the mess he's made of his own hand. 

"Rey?" 

Her head snaps up. 

"What did you just call me? Not 'Sunshine' or 'Jones' or 'her' or 'hayseed' or—" 

"I know your name."

Something in the gravity of his tone makes her light expression falter.

"I think you should lie back and hold it up over your head," she says, gently pulling his elbow up until he's reclining with his hand in the air. "I'll keep pressure on it." 

"Rey," he says again, glancing at the ceiling. Maybe it's his imagination that she presses a tiny bit harder on his bandaged knuckles. "I'm not going to be able to play tomorrow. I may not be able to play for awhile."

"Don't be ridiculous. I have a sewing kit at the bottom of my bag. A couple stitches, you'll be good as new."

It's an odd idea—as if he could ever be either _good_ or _new_. He wonders if Rey wakes up every morning feeling both.

"I've seen how you patch up your clothes. I'll pass."

"Coward," she says, looking down at him with the tiniest hint of a grin, holding up his wounded hand in her small fingers. Aside from the sharp, biting pain of it, he can take some pleasure in the fact that she's touching him. "You're gonna need to see a doctor in the morning. I'd feel better if we could clean this with something other than Snap's whiskey." She glances up, nodding at the window she'd been struggling with. "Unless you want me to bust one of these windows and carry you to safety."

"I told you, I'll never fit." Ben thinks maybe he smiles a little bit as he says it. Maybe the darkness conceals his modest attempt at levity. 

"It's only one night," she points out. "It's just..._cold_. 'Course, I've been cold plenty of times." He hates how matter-of-fact her tone is, and how it makes him want to wrap her up in his coat, even though she's the one tending to him. "Should be a blanket or two in here. I don't wanna be dead tired for the matinee tomorrow. Keep the pressure on, okay?"

With that, she rises to her feet and breaks the longest physical contact he's shared with another person in months.

"You're expecting me to walk out on stage tomorrow and open for him after this?" he calls after her. "After he pinned that note on you?"

"I'm not gonna refuse to perform over a joke." She opens a cabinet door under the seat, reaches in and pulls out a dirty undershirt, winces, and closes it back up again. "It's fine.”

"It’s _fine_? You're going to wait in the wings after our set, hoping that Dameron will call you up for more stage time?” He winces as he accidentally pushes off his injured hand in order to sit up. “He has _no_ respect for you. You understand that, right?"

Rey flips open another cabinet and triumphantly yanks out a wool blanket, covered in red plaid. 

"It's got nothing to do with respect. I'm here to sing. That's it.” She slams the cabinet shut and opens another. “I don't have the luxury of quitting a job over a stupid joke. And you've led a really charmed life if this is the worst thing that ever happened to you."

Rey freezes in front of the last of the empty storage compartments, as if she remembers something important two seconds too late.

They’ve never talked about the fight with his father on the night of the crash. But, of course, Rey probably believes—like, seemingly, everyone else on the planet—that Ben should have gotten on that plane instead of her hero, Han Solo.

"You have no idea about the worst thing that ever happened to me,” he snaps, feeling twin spikes of anger and indignation. They pair well with the throbbing in his hand.

She seems curious, rather than chastened. It's almost disappointing.

"You're right," she says, tossing the lone plaid blanket down on the seat beside him. "I have no idea because you've never told me anything about that." 

They both let that exchange hang in the cold air for a few moments before he pushes the blanket back in her direction with his left hand.

"You take it. I'll sleep over there," he says, nodding at one of the smaller seats in the front of the bus. "My coat's warm enough. It's Italian wool."

The look on her face says that Rey's not buying the martyr act.

"Just stay there, Solo. You're injured and you wouldn't even fit in that chair sitting up straight, let alone lying on your back." She exhales and wraps her arms around her shoulders. "The bigger problem is that we have one blanket between us."

He looks down at the depth of the bench seat, analyzing just how close they'd need to be in order to fit on it together. It's about as wide as a twin mattress. Maybe not even. She'd have to squeeze right up against him. 

His mind races in ten directions at once.

"Rey, we—we don't have to do that. I said you could take the blanket."

"I'm not bein' polite, Ben. I'm _cold_." He hadn't had the presence of mind to notice before, but she's shivering. "The temperature's only getting lower until sunrise.” Her eyes shift around like she’s afraid to meet his gaze. “I think we're gonna have to—" she takes a deep breath, before letting the words tumble out quickly "—lie down together. Keep each other warm." 

It's not like her to admit a weakness or express any kind of need in front of him. But her teeth are practically chattering and it's not like she needs to ask him twice to share a makeshift bed. 

She barely needs to ask once. 

It’s wrong. He knows it’s wrong. But he'd _rather_ share the much larger motel room bed that's waiting for him on the other side of this godforsaken parking lot. More accurately, he'd rather make a mess of it with her. There's not really a night that's gone by on this tour, where he hasn't idly fantasized about Rey knocking on his door, late at night, in that sheer nightgown, unable to sleep. 

Needing him. 

So, there's a part of him (he doesn't want to think about _which_ part) that's overjoyed by the prospect of her, curled up next to him, even if it's only sleeping. Even if it feels like they're letting Dameron win. 

“All right,” he says, simply. He’s careful to keep his tone even, his face more..._politely resigned_ than excited at the prospect. 

"We can tell everyone we just woke up in our seats in the morning," she adds, her shy demeanor shifting into something more tactical. 

"How do we explain my hand?" He sits down next to her, examining the handkerchief bandage. 

"Sleepwalking," she replies, without missing a beat. She unfolds the blanket. "I think I should sleep on the edge. If one of us is gonna roll off onto the floor, it should be the person who didn't just smash her hand to shit."

He hates this. After all, the male half of the couple is supposed to walk on the curb side on the sidewalk—not that they're a couple—but he doesn't want to risk another argument now that a fragile peace has been established.

So he lies down on his left side, his spine against the seat back, making as much room for her as possible, even though the remaining space looks closer to a quarter of the bench than a full half. 

And she's hesitating. 

"You don't want to go, uh...back to back?" Rey asks. He doesn't think he's imagining her gaze drifting down the length of his body. 

"I think it would be warmer for you like this, if I—I put my arm around you." He lifts up his right arm to demonstrate, and it's hard to see in the dark, but he thinks he sees her bite her lower lip. "You might even fit inside my coat." 

He can see her chest expand and contract rapidly, even through her baggy jacket. 

"Well," she says, sitting down in front of him, "I suppose it'd, uh, keep your right hand elevated." She carefully lowers herself down onto her side, leaving half an inch of room between his front and her back. "It's only for a few hours. And we'll be asleep the whole time."

Ben doesn't tell her that it's not even midnight, according to his watch. He lifts the blanket over them, making sure Rey has her fair share of it, before sliding his arm around her waist. She's holding her breath. Not for the first time, he wonders if she's ever slept in a man's bed before.

"Is this okay?" he asks. He can't help that his mouth is so close to her ear, but maybe it's the just cold that makes her shiver.

"We're good at pretending to be in love, right?" Rey lets her body slip back an inch until they're touching at seemingly every point. "We can just keep pretending now."

"Right," he agrees—feeling the stiff, shiny fabric of her dress rubbing against the zipper of his pants—as they both pretend to fall asleep immediately. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not too many historic/music details in this chapter, but I want to point something out because a number of people brought this up in the comments: Life on the road for musicians in this era was pretty wild. Between the drinking, the drugs, the monotony, and the sexism and all-around bad-behavior, I don't think this "prank" would have been considered particularly egregious in that context. 
> 
> The bickering that happens when Ben first wakes up was heavily inspired by the long-gone series [Northern Exposure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Exposure). I watched this show on DVD a few years ago, and it's one of my all-time favorites. It doesn't hurt that it has a wonderful enemies-to-lovers and will they/won't they dynamic in the two main characters. There are also multiple episodes where they get trapped in the wilderness together and that's really what I was thinking about while writing this. And I know bless_my_circuits shares my love for Fleischman and O'Connell.


	6. yesterday, today, and tomorrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Ben start to work out their differences under Only One Blanket.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi friends, sorry I sat on this update for a little bit. It's been a little bit of work to edit what I'd already written into the remaining chapters. And you know how sometimes you reread something you wrote months ago and just shake your head? That. 
> 
> [ Don't Come Knocking - Bono and Andrea Corr](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxeo3q9L5Nw) (Sorry for the hilariously bad Bono slideshow in this video.)  
[ It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels - Kitty Wells](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKleTa94dC8)  
[ Grass Widows - Iron and Wine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4YgmmA2K3c)  
[No Need to Cry - Neko Case](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGJHhdbNETY)

"_Ow_!" 

"Well, it's hard to lie perfectly still, you know. Just move your hand."

"When I put it between us, you keep crushing it."

"You're resting it on top of me at your own risk, Solo."

There's a thin, gray haze covering the dark skies, turning the moon into a puffy ball of light behind the clouds. Rey hugs her right arm across her chest and looks up at it through the slightly greasy window (Snap must've been resting his forehead on it), trying not to shiver. Or breathe, really.

"It's resting on the _blanket_. And I thought you were asleep."

"You're not asleep, either," she huffs. "And I'm still cold."

Every time Rey shivers, Solo seems to fidget a little, which makes _her_ fidget a lot. And then he adjusts his body to compensate and then the cycle starts again. 

"You're still cold because you can't share body heat through seven layers of clothing." It’s strange how his voice sounds subtly different, coming from so close behind her ear.

"Well I'm not taking my dress off to test your theory." 

He doesn’t reply. 

His injured hand, wrapped in her handkerchief, rests very carefully on the blanket, covering her hip. She'd directed him to move it there to keep it elevated—and also so that his arm wouldn't be _around_ her waist, which would feel more like being _held_. And that’s not what’s happening here. 

It's not like his hand is capable of groping her in its current state. There's no point in fixating on where it is or what it's touching. 

Just feels like it's burning a hole through the blanket and her dress, is all. 

"Hand still hurting?"

He inhales sharply. "No."

"Like hell it isn't," she mumbles into her left arm, serving as her pillow.

"It's my problem, not yours." 

She rolls her eyes so dramatically that Ben can probably feel them moving.

"It _is_ my problem, Solo. Your hands affect me. Not that I'm not grateful that you defended my honor against the bus door." She waits for him to react—to move half an inch or grunt or something—but nothing happens. "Just promise me you're not gonna do that to anyone in the morning and bust up your other hand."

Rey feels his chest expand a bit, drawing in a breath against her back. 

"You want to talk about affecting each other?" He sits up slightly on his left elbow. "You're the one who missed your cue three times and left me on stage filling time in front of a thousand people."

"Well now you know what that feels like," she retorts. "Being left hangin' in front of a crowd of people. Every night."

"It’s part of the act. It’s called being professional. And for once, I did exactly what _you_ wanted me to do—"

“What _I_ wanted you to do?"

"—and got slapped for my trouble.”

"When did I _ever_ say I wanted you to—”

"Never mind." He lowers himself back down behind her.

"Jesus, Solo. Why are you like this? I feel like I'm arguing with a fourteen year old girl."

"You don’t have to worry about it anymore because I meant what I said." His voice is quietly resolute. "I'm not opening for him tomorrow." 

"You definitely can't play on that hand, but we can manage a set or two without you. Maybe Hux can—"

"No, Rey." There's enough of a pause to make her heart drop. "I'm not opening for him any other day, either."

The faint sound of tires barreling down a lonely highway becomes a loud roar in the silence between them.

Rey turns her head over her right shoulder. 

"What're you saying then? You're just gonna pick up and leave?" She wants to see his face when he answers.

Only she hadn't exactly realized his head was quite so near to hers. It seems to surprise him a little bit, too, because he quickly focuses his attention on something behind her.

“Don’t you have a place you’d rather be, instead of touring the upper Midwest in December?” he asks, side-stepping the question.

“No. But it sounds like you do.”

“California,” he says, with so little hesitation that it feels _final_—like he's been practicing that line, saying it to himself for the last couple months. Formulating an escape plan. 

Rey turns her head back to the front, not wanting him to see that her face is reacting in a way she can’t quite get a handle on. 

"What's in California?" It's half a genuine question. At least it doesn't betray a sense of panic or disappointment. The tour—the only real travel experience of her whole life—hasn't stopped in any place as glamorous as an actual coast.

"People making music that doesn't sound like it came out of a factory run by old men. The forms are different. The instrumentation, the attitude. People take risks." There's an animated tone to his voice that Rey hasn't heard in—well, maybe ever. "Don't you ever turn the dial past Jeannie Riley and Glen Campbell? Do you know about Laurel Canyon? Have you listened to Frank Zappa? Sly and the Family Stone? Cream?"

"I know other kinds of music," Rey insists, turning over onto her back. She’s surprised by the defensive tone in her own voice, even though she’s not quite sure she’s heard of those musicians. "You don't have to make me feel—" she fumbles for the word "—_inferior_ all the time."

"I'm not. I mean, you're not. Inferior." The way he’s leaning on his elbow, slightly elevated, makes her feel like he’s literally looking down at her, though. "It's just a different kind of place than Nashville."

Rey stares at the grimey roof of the bus and tries to think of everything she knows about California. Palm trees. Surfing. Movie stars. She lists them out in her head. It's better than thinking about how it'll feel to watch another person leave her behind in search of something new. 

* * *

"I'd like to see the Pacific Ocean," she says, with a wistfulness that tugs at what's left of Ben's heart. "Any ocean."

There’s something he’s supposed to say here. He pictures himself choosing the right words—_comforting words_—and taking Rey’s cold hand and warming it up in his. Well, in his good hand, at least. 

He imagines himself telling her, "Come with me." To meet producers. To write songs. Better songs. Once they're away from all this—_Snoke, the label, the tour, the road_—he could be the kind of man who keeps a blanket in his trunk for impromptu trips to the beach. They could get stoned and sit on the soft sand and listen to the radio. The Byrds, maybe. Or Marvin Gaye or Miles Davis or The Band, or whoever.

He looks at Rey, lying on her back, shivering in her jacket, and imagines her seabreeze-swept hair blowing gently across her sun-kissed face. She could rest her head on his shoulder while they watch the waves crest. And maybe she would tilt her chin up and lean closer, almost like they do every night. Except this time they wouldn't let the moment linger until the last note fades.

He could tell her about any of those ideas, but instead, he lets the words swirl and twist in his head.

“It’s beautiful,” is all he manages. It's not a lie.

"My whole life I've been watching people leave." Her small fingers pick at some loose thread on her coat. "I guess singing duets with me at the civic center in Bloomington, Indiana isn't nearly as exciting as San Francisco." 

"Los Angeles," he clarifies, because he can’t help himself. His right hand rests on the blanket, on top of her jacket, on top of her dress, somewhere near her stomach. "You don't need to play the Midwest circuit with a bunch of animals, you know. You could go back home to Nashville and write more songs. You can sing with anyone who can hold a tune and strum three chords on the guitar. Find a new partner. Someone you like better."

"Nashville isn't home," she says, not taking that last bit of bait. "I got nothing to go back to, anyway. Don't exactly have the luxury of calling it quits now." After a beat, she adds, "And I already had a partner I liked better." 

“Right.” 

Yes, why should his petty jealousy of Finn Storm—a man he's only seen in photographs—be limited to his songwriting and vocal abilities, when it can also include the fact that he'll always be Rey's first choice?

“You’re growin' on me, though, Solo." The faintest trace of a smirk crosses her lips and he breathes out carefully. "The whole point of me singin' with you was to make you more likeable. If you leave now, all of Sunshine’s damn smiles will've been for nothing.”

"So, this is what you want?" He nods at their surroundings: the suit coats strewn over seat backs, the full ashtrays, and mysterious stains on the floor. "The whole tour’s held together with barbed wire and spit. Maz plans these fucking things on a dart board with a map over it. Is this fun for you?"

"No, it's not 'fun' right now. It's freezing and your hand is a mess and every night I make eyes at a man who acts like he can't stand to be near me." Ben bites his tongue so that she'll continue. "But this tour is important to me—playin' this kind of music is important to me. It's all I have in the world."

"Because of the money? I can guarantee, no one ever makes any on the road like this. We end up spending more on—"

“It's not about money." She says it forcefully enough that Ben closes his mouth, suddenly conscious of the volume of his voice, the way he's talking over her. "I can’t remember much about my parents. They left a pile of albums, though—your mom and dad’s, included." Her eyes move back and forth across his face, before she focuses on the ceiling again. "They liked that kinda music. Classic stuff. Hank Williams, Luke Skywalker. Kitty Wells. I used to sing along to 'It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels' and make 'em laugh. Listening to Poe Dameron on the radio is practically the last memory I have of my dad. And I guess I kinda figured, if I could ever do that—if I could get songs on the radio, that sort of music, even if it’s old-fashioned—well then, wherever they are now, maybe they’d hear me.” 

Ben doesn't say anything. He's not used to being anyone's confidante; people never want to be vulnerable in front of him. 

Not that he blames them.

“That's why I taught myself how to play music," she continues, giving him a little shrug, like it’s just a little bit more than nothing. "I can’t afford to scream at Poe Dameron for bein' an ass. It’s probably silly, but he’s the best shot I’ll ever have of them listening to my voice. Even if they didn’t know it was me singin.’ I just want them to hear me. You know?” 

Ben forces himself not to picture Rey as a little girl, standing in front of the radio, mimicking Kitty Wells and Patsy Cline. Or holding onto his parents' albums—with all those songs about second chances, getting through hard times, and raising a child—after her own family had up and left her behind.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me that?” he asks quietly, pushing the whole set of intrusive images out of his mind’s eye.

She glances up at him.

"Didn’t seem like you wanted to know.” 

Based solely on his everyday demeanor, he can't reasonably say she's wrong to have assumed that. 

They lie there quietly for awhile, side-by-side, shivering separately. 

It’s Ben who finally breaks the silence.

"Have you ever listened to Joni Mitchell?" Rey shakes her head twice. He gives himself a moment to breathe out and think about how he wants to say it. "Her songs make you feel like—like you're on the other side of a confessional. They’re very...intimate. And kind of complicated. I don't know why, but when I listen to her, it reminds me of you." 

* * *

" 'Complicated?' No one on God's green earth thinks my songs are complicated."

"I'm not talking about your songs. _You're _complicated." He looks down at her, his eyes scanning up and down her face, refusing to rest on just one spot. 

"Me?"

His face is a curious mix of strong features, like an artist making bold, thick strokes on a blank canvas. But then there are the soft—almost delicate—parts.

His lips, for example. What's the point in a man having plush, pink lips like that?

"You."

She still likes the way he says that word. There's something heady about being the center of his focus, especially when they're in private like this, and it's not for anyone else's entertainment.

"You're filling in blanks now, Solo?" She raises an eyebrow. "Since when have you taken an interest in my life? You made your mind up about me the moment I walked into that studio, wearin’ that silly dress.”

“I could tell it wasn't your dress. But you looked nice,” he says, quietly. “It made an impression— when you tried to put me in my place."

“_Tried_?” she scoffs. "Anyway, you hated me."

“I don’t hate you. I never did. I was jealous of your song. The way you write. You’re a complicated woman, but your music is...simple.”

Her smile fades, like water circling a drain.

“Gee, thanks.” She narrows her eyes and turns back on her left side, facing away from him, placing herself as close to the edge of the seat as possible. Of course she doesn't know who the hell Frank Zappa is. Of course her songs are simple and catchy, with three measly chords. No one else in the world seems to think that's a bad thing. What does it even matter what Solo thinks?

"I didn’t—” There's a twinge of panic in his voice. “I meant it as a compliment. You have an ear that I...no matter how hard I try or how many years of piano lessons I took, I just can’t write songs like that. Honest songs, with a beginning, middle and end. Your lyrics—they’re like a whole universe in ten lines.” He breathes out, hard. “It's almost fucking annoying how you make it look easy.”

“Easy?” She turns her head. “Nothing in my entire life has come easy. Ever. _You_ try writing music through trial and error. Probably takes me twice as long as it'd take you. Not that I’d know how long anything takes you, because you keep it all to yourself in that damn notebook and don't tell me what you're workin' on. And haven't you noticed that I haven’t finished a new song in two months?”

She doesn't say out loud that her slump probably has an awful lot to do with the absence of her writing partner. 

"Maybe you haven't had the right inspiration." She swears his body shifts forward, a tiny bit closer to hers. "You can't write music without a little heartbreak. Han used to say that, at least."

"Who says I haven't had a little heartbreak?"

When he pauses and there's no other distractions or noises, she can almost feel his pulse racing instead of her own. 

"Han would’ve liked your songs. He would’ve liked you.”

Rey looks up at the nearly-full moon again, through a window that’s either frosting over or fogging up. 

Back in the summer, hearing those words would’ve made her head spin like a cartoon cat with stars and birds circling his head. 

But now, an exaggerated little sigh escapes her lips because there’s something more she’s wanting him to say and it doesn’t have anything to do with his father.

There’s another question that feels like it’s burning in her throat.

“What’s a girl got to do to get her singin' partner to like her?”

Everything is so still that Rey swears she can hear drops of condensation landing on the pavement underneath the bus. Solo doesn’t breathe for a distressingly long amount of time.

“What makes you think I don’t?” he says, finally. 

Rey feels a tiny spark of something light in her chest. And, for some reason, she suddenly notices the rough texture of his pants through the nylon of her stockings. 

Were their legs this close before? Almost intertwined?

“You got a funny way of showing it,” she manages to reply.

Rey’s pretty sure there are a couple beads of sweat forming at the top of her forehead, even though she’s still shivering from the cold.

"You're shaking." She feels him adjust the position of his arm. "You could just—"

"No, I'm not," she insists, visibly shaking.

"I can feel your teeth chattering. Just turn around. You'll be warmer if you're facing me. More like a cocoon." Rey feels his left hand bump against her spine as he undoes the buttons along the flap of his heavy coat. When he opens it like an invitation, it immediately feels a degree or two warmer under the blanket. 

Maybe there’s something to his body heat theory, after all.

Instinctively seeking the slightly higher temperature, she rolls all the way over onto her right side until she's facing him. Or, more accurately, facing his chest, her nose brushing against the soft knit of his sweater.

"Better?" His voice is somehow both ragged and soothing. 

"I guess it's a little warmer," she concedes, breathing in the faint scent of cigarette smoke lingering in the lining of his coat.

His left hand snakes between them and tugs at the little metal zipper pull on her jacket. 

“Same principle,” he mumbles, as the dull olive green material splits open to reveal a strip of shiny fabric from her dress. "Fewer layers, better heat exchange."

She’d been too agitated by the end of the set to change into something more comfortable and practical. And although she’d already paid for that decision during the chilly four hour bus ride without the benefit of pants, in this particular moment, she’s quite happy to be wearing something more enticing than a pair of old jeans. 

Ben gingerly moves his bandaged right hand around to her back, and if this is all part of some game of make-believe, it feels extremely convincing. 

“Why’d you do that tonight?” she murmurs into his sweater, just below his collarbone. 

“Do what?” 

Rey huffs out a frustrated little breath at the way he’s drawing this out. Forcing her to articulate exactly what she means. 

“Why’d you try to—” she exhales and starts again. “At the end of the song, why didn’t you just do the same thing you do every night and pull away?” 

She looks up at him, awaiting an explanation.

“What did I do differently tonight?” He says it less like a question and more like a leading statement. 

“Why were you acting like you were gonna kiss me?” She rushes through the words and then pushes out the leftover breath, almost relieved to get through it. 

“I wasn’t acting.” He just keeps looking at her in that slightly unnerving way—a touch too intimate, an inch too close. “I’ve never been any good at—”

“I kissed you," she says, breathlessly. "I got carried away and I kissed you that time and I didn’t know how you...Well, you never said anything and I didn’t—”

Ben’s mouth is on hers in an instant, as if he can't wait for her to reach the period in her run-on sentence. Even though she's too surprised to move her lips in any way that would traditionally constitute a real, official kiss, her heart feels like it could explode into a thousand bits of confetti. 

He pushes forward so eagerly that she starts to fall backward off the edge of the seat.

"Ow!" he says, for the second time, using his injured hand to grab her by the jacket and pull her forward. "Dammit."

"Are you all right?"

He nods quickly, shaking off the pain, refocusing his attention on her face. 

Her heart thumps hard so hard she can hear it beating in her eardrums. Ba-_dum_, ba-_dum_, ba-_dum_. She feels that pleasant ache all over again. Same longing as every night. Except this time there’s the slightest hint of disbelief in his expression. His brow quirks a tiny bit like he’s asking something without words. 

“The best and worst part of every show is when you’re giving me this look," he says, after a spell. "And I know it’s part of the act and we're there to put on a show and leave the audience guessing. I know all that.” His good hand slides up the side of her neck, just below her ear. "But every time we ended that song, I wanted you to lean forward and kiss me again." 

There’s a fluttering in the pit of her stomach. 

Rey searches his face, highlighted by soft moonlight and the harsher glow of neon, his eyes dark and liquid—hesitant, but a little bit hopeful, too.

His thumb strokes gently across her cheek. She's only been kissed a handful of times and none of those kisses unfolded this slowly. Maybe this is the moment when she's supposed to shut her eyes, but Rey can't bring herself to do that. Could be because she's still caught up in a little bit of disbelief that this is actually happening, or maybe it's that she wants to watch how his shoulders draw up slightly as leans in another inch, tilting his head to the right.

He takes in one last deep breath, like he's letting the moment persist or collecting himself, and his shoulders drop back down a tiny bit, as he exhales and leans in a little bit closer. 

Ba-_dum_, ba-_dum_, ba-_dum_.

She's near enough to catch a hint of Agua Brava along the collar of his sweater. Her eyelids flutter closed on their own. 

He must shut his eyes, too, because their noses meet before their lips do. His warm breath tickles her skin as they bump lightly against each other and pause, each drawing back adjusting the angle. His long nose nudges along hers for a moment, his hand gently tipping her chin up slightly while drawing her closer. It's safe and fearsome at the same time. 

The kiss is softer and slower than she expects—their mouths brushing at first, rather than locking onto each other, in that way that Rey sometimes sees in movies. She's still for a moment, letting him kiss her upper lip delicately, then her lower lip with a bit more fervor, until she's opening up, following his lead, kissing him back. All she can feel is his hand on the nape of her neck, his nose jutting into her cheek, and a rough trace of stubble on his chin. 

And how much he wants this. She can feel that, too. 

She barely notices her own hands moving inside his coat, over his chest and up to his shoulders. Like her fingers can't bear to be idle. 

They're both breathing hard, wearing the same anxious-but-elated expression when they pull back. 

“Thing is, Solo," she says, barely suppressing a smile, "when you wear that giant hat on stage, it’s hard to get close enough to kiss you.” 

He seems surprised for a second, before the corner of his mouth pulls up into a quarter—_maybe half_—of a grin and he chuckles softly. 

Apparently he _is _capable of finding things funny.

"I wanted to touch you," he says, running his left index finger down the column of her throat, leaving what feels like a trail of sparks in his wake. "This whole time, I just didn't know if—"

"You can touch me." She whispers it into his neck. "Please." 

He pulls at the sleeve of her jacket, helping her ease her arm out of one side and then the other, until it becomes a military-surplus-coat-shaped sheet underneath her, draped over the vinyl upholstery of the seat. 

Strange how you can slap someone’s face at 9:00 pm and then want their hands exploring every bare inch of your skin at midnight.

Ben must be a mind reader, because his fingers make their way down to the neckline of her dress, dipping under it, and the taut, coiled throbbing around her belly seems to squeeze a little bit tighter. 

He lowers his head and Rey wets her lips and takes a quick breath in, but instead of moving in for another kiss he veers left, down the side of her jaw. 

She can’t help her shoulder shrugging up when he presses his mouth to a spot on the base of her neck. Rey hasn’t ever known herself to be ticklish, but then, she’s also never had anyone touching these particular places. Not like this, anyhow. 

It's not like she's an expert at heavy petting, any more than she is about kissing. 

Ben maneuvers himself over her, resting some of his weight on his right elbow, while his left hand explores her waist and the location of the zipper of her dress—without pulling on it. 

And then he’s not just kissing the spot on her neck, but almost sucking on it, kinda gentle at first and then not-so-gentle and it’s not that it _hurts_, exactly, but it’s just so overwhelming. No man’s ever put his mouth on her like this. 

She feels her face flush just thinking about where else on her body he could do this. And what it would feel like, considering how flustered she's getting just from whatever dark magic he's doing to her neck. 

Somehow her palms are sweating even though she can practically see her own breath. Not that her palms are even _doing_ anything but clutching at her skirt. She silently prays that he’ll assume her trembling is on account of the cold. 

She thinks about the sounds that women make—the ones she accidentally overhears through their motel room walls—and she’s definitely starting to understand the impulse, but her throat feels empty and dry. And instead of moaning or crying out or whispering his name, she feels herself freezing up, like she's on stage, in the spotlight, about to sing a song she doesn't know the words to.

“Rey? Is this—” he raises himself up a bit “—am I, uh...hurting you?”

“No! I’m fine, it’s just—”

Just that her is heart racing as if she’d finished climbing a mountain ten seconds ago. That’s all.

“You can touch me, too,” he says, subtly glancing down at her hands, balled into fists around the stiff fabric of her dress.

_Of course_. _God. _She’s lying there like a damn corpse.

“Sorry.” She’s not sure what she’s apologizing for, aside from being an awkward combination of worked up and terrified. “I want to. I'm just...”

Ben pulls back another couple inches, like he’s trying to take in the bigger picture, and the blanket slowly slides off his back. It’s so quiet, Rey can hear the wool hitting the floor. 

“Haven’t you ever made love to someone before?”

There’s an endless moment of quiet. 

“No.” Somehow, her body stiffens even more. “I only ever sang about it.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Photos of Laurel Canyon in the late 60s, early 70s](https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/photos/2015/02/laurel-canyon-photographs)


	7. i feel the earth move

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Haven’t you ever made love to someone before?”
> 
> There’s an endless moment of quiet.
> 
> “No.” Somehow, her body stiffens even more. “I only ever sang about it.”
> 
> In the immortal words of Flight of the Conchords, "IT'S BUSINESS TIME."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got some questions about why this chapter took a hot minute to post, given that I pretty much had this fic pre-written. The thing is, when you go back and read something you wrote several months earlier, you realize all the things you don't like about it and need to change. Editing always takes me longer than writing, and I very much wanted to get this a little more right. I have more anxiety and stress over posting this fic than I've ever had about anything I've written, so I'd rather take a few extra days when necessary. Thanks for understanding. 
> 
> Oh, and here are [some examples of what I imagine the shape of Rey's dress to look like](https://ibb.co/album/hLTsmF). 
> 
> Song inspo for this chapter (yes, I was really in a Tapestry mood, which isn't exactly the right year for this, but Carole King was kind of someone I had in the back of my mind when I was outlining this story?)
> 
> [I Feel the Earth Move - Carole King](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6913KnbMpHM)  
[Natural Woman - Carole King](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQXY8zwQgmc)  
[Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? - Carole King](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLA7sanwnN8)  
[1000 Miles Away - case/lang/veirs ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tGbIZOwwAs)  
[If I Were a Carpenter - Johnny Cash](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSQ6fSKLlG0)  
[You've Really Got a Hold On Me - Smokey Robinson and the Miracles](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdDnqSFYXFs)
> 
> [content warning: unsafe sex. Ya'll, I know. I really tortured myself about this, but we're going to have to pull out in this one. Please practice sex safe in real life in 2020 and see the end notes]

"No. I only ever sang about it."

The words are still echoing in his ears. Bouncing around the walls of the bus. Chiming like a steeple bell. A town crier's voice in Ben's head yells "Extra! Extra! She's a virgin!" from a street corner.

"But your lyrics—" he pauses, mentally sifting through snippets and phrases and titles. "You wrote a song called 'The Ways to Love a Man.' "

"From hearing songs on the radio." Her brow furrows slightly, like she's confused about how he hadn't pulled this information out of thin air four months ago. "Not from...anything that happened to me. I listen to music and I read these books, like—"

"Henry Miller?"

"—paperbacks." There's a nervous flutter in her voice. "Gothics, uh, mostly, but some other stuff. Have you read _Valley of the Dolls_?" He shakes his head. "Well, they're easy to stick in my bag. Carry around. And I got a big imagination. I can picture anything."

He doesn't think he imagines her glancing up and down the length of his torso. 

It's not a shock, exactly. Maybe it's just the cognitive dissonance of squaring the events of the last five minutes, divided by this revelation, multiplied by her uptight off-stage behavior, subtracted from the suggestive lyrics she's penned—lines they've sang to each other, separated only by the windscreen of a microphone. 

The puzzle pieces don't quite snap together.

"I wondered if—" Ben straightens his back "—you'd known some great love, or something."

Rey shakes her head. 

"It's easy to sell songs about that kinda thing. I got good at it." She sits up a bit on her elbows. "Writing, I mean. I can get up in front of a thousand people and sing about making love because I've done it a hundred times in my head. It feels like it's almost the truth."

Ben mentally dog-ears that last statement to mull over at a later time. 

"And, uh—" he glances up at the bus windows behind her, conveniently avoiding eye contact "—Finn?"

Her eyes widen in what appears to be legitimate surprise. 

"We never did..._that_." Ben draws in a tentative breath, as she continues. "It wasn't like...whatever you're thinking." 

"All right," he says, even though he's still not sure what he's actually thinking. He runs his hand through his hair, like that might reset his spiraling, racing thoughts back to something simple and logical. Like the fact that she's an innocent young woman. And his singing partner. And has significantly more to lose if this goes wrong. Three logical considerations. 

"Is it? Is it 'all right?' " Rey sits up a little further, like she's trying to decode his expression. "Are you—" her face scrunches up a bit, like she doesn't want to say the word "—_disappointed_?"

"No! I just—"

"It's fine if you don't want to." She slides back, all the way to the end off the seat, like she's retreating from a fight that's about to turn the wrong way. "Completely fine. We just got carried away, is all." 

All of the fire and anticipation of the last five minutes dwindles into a single wisp of smoke. 

"Rey—"

"Is it because you're leavin' tomorrow?" She turns her head to the left and looks out the window onto the mostly empty parking lot. Her profile is absolutely perfect, framed by the cloudy glass.

_Another good reason not to_, he somehow stops himself from saying. But there's a bigger issue.

"Your first time shouldn't be—in a bus." He glances toward the door with the cracked window. "Especially not a bus you can't leave."

"_That's_ what you're worrying about?"

"I don't want to push you into anything. If you're not ready. And I don't have a—"

She suddenly sits all the way up, looking him straight in the eye.

"When did I say I wasn't ready?" Her voice is steady. Full-throated. 

"We don't have to, Rey. Not like this."

She deserves a big bed in a nice hotel. Crisp sheets and fluffy pillows. And room service. He wonders if she's ever had room service. 

Ben can see her throat bob as she swallows.

"I want to. All of it. With you." 

His heart punches against his ribs. He's supposed to respond, but instead he needs to let those words hang in the air for as long as possible, rather than erase them with his own. 

Luckily, Rey doesn't wait for a suave reply that's never going to come. She leans forward, until she's on her hands and knees, making her way back to their makeshift bed, where he's still kneeling. 

She stops a few inches in front of him, in a diffuse patch of moonlight, like she's stepping into the spotlight in front of a microphone. Except she's not the girl he stands in front of every night with the big smile and southern twang. Sunshine is pretty. She has the right mix of sweetness and sass. She can charm the pants off an audience. But she's not Rey. 

And he wants Rey more than he's ever wanted anything in his entire miserable life. 

For some reason, she seems to want him, too. 

Ben extends his good hand and reaches for one of hers, pulling her the rest of the way, until she's pressed against him. 

"And lots of first times happen in inconvenient places," she says. 

"You're sure?" He scans her face.

"Far as I'm concerned," she says, "that lock's keeping them out as much as it's keeping us in."

No logical considerations could ever stand a chance against this. 

Rey kisses him enthusiastically, as if she's just discovered a new favorite pastime and she's diving in head-first, making up for several wasted months of cold warfare between them. She uses her hands, wrapping her fingers around the back of his neck, scratching lightly up and down his scalp, rubbing her thumb across his cheek. She tears off his coat—almost catching his injured hand on the sleeve—and tosses it aside. Ben barely even hears the rattle of the pills in the pocket as the coat lands somewhere behind her. The cool air probably cuts through the more permeable material of his sweater, but he doesn't feel it at all.

"Tell me if you ever want me to stop," he says quietly. It's the extent of his chivalry.

Rey nods her head into his shoulder and he pulls back to look at her, waiting for a verbal acknowledgement of understanding. 

"I'll tell you," she agrees. 

"Or slow down."

She grabs the front of his sweater in her small fist and pulls him closer again.

"I don't want you to stop or slow down right now. Okay?"

With that settled—and the angel on his shoulder temporarily satisfied—the devil on his other shoulder urges him to return to the important work of marking up her neck, mostly because she's enjoying it so much, but also so that there won't be any doubt from anyone else on this tour as to what happened. 

He’s not proud.

Ben reaches around to her back with his left hand, feeling for the zipper of her dress.

"Can I…?" His fingers brush against a thin stripe of something stiffer than the fabric. 

He feels Rey nod against his ear and she shivers a little bit as he slowly tugs at the zipper pull. He lowers it just enough to move the sleeves off her shoulders and let the bodice of the dress come down a few inches, revealing her bra. It's black, and cut low, but otherwise basic. The hook and eye poses some difficulty with his one set of working fingers—and it doesn't help that Rey distracts him by nibbling on his right ear—but he eventually manages to undo the closure. 

With a soft tug at the front of the bra, the straps slide off her shoulders, the cups fall away from her chest...and two white athletic socks fall out.

More than anything, it's the incongruity of the socks that gives him pause. He grabs them from the bunched up fabric around her waist and holds them up silently and quizzically.

"Shit," she says, under her breath.

"For safekeeping?" 

"I need a little help with that neckline. Works better than tissues or cotton balls." She snatches the socks out of his hand. "Sorry."

"What are you apologizing for?"

"I s'pose this might be a let down," she says, looking down at her bare, unaugmented chest.

"A let down?" He puts his index finger under her chin to tilt her head back up. "You're perfect, the way you are. Do you know that?"

"Not exactly a Jane or a Raquel."

"Well, I don't want a Jane or a Raquel. I want you." His hand trails along the underside of her breast and over her nipple, stiff in the cold air. "Just you." 

The layers of sheer, silky fabric that give her dress shape on stage now prove to be an unexpected hindrance. He pushes gently on her chest with the unscathed heel of his right hand, guiding her back until her shoulders meet the seat, while his left fumbles to find her stocking-clad calves under the excess material. 

His eyes roam over her silhouette, framed in the moonlight and flickering pink neon from the motel sign. He runs his fingers up the shiny nylon—the backs of her knees, her thighs and hips, up to the waistband of her pantyhose. With his hand on her stomach he can feel each heavy inhale and exhale. Hooking his thumb under the elastic, he tugs down, just a little bit at a time, revealing an inch of bare skin.

He must pause a couple beats too long, because Rey lifts her head up a little bit.

"What? What is it?" Her voice is tinged with anxiety. 

"You're not wearing any—uh…anything under your—" 

"Am I s'pose to?"

It's a good question. 

He pulls down a little bit more. "I'm not complaining."

He thinks he hears her mumble something about "panties getting bunched up under there," or "extra laundry," but he's so distracted, it's like hearing someone talk underwater. 

Because it's surreal to have the woman he's been staring at and thinking about and trying to decipher for nearly six months lying underneath him, just waiting. Brimming with nervous tension.

After a little awkward one-handed maneuvering, resulting in more than one run in her stockings, Ben manages to yank them off completely. He tosses them over his shoulder. God knows where they end up. 

It doesn't matter that no man has ever done this with her, his rational mind insists. But the voice representing the decidedly more hot-blooded part of his body loudly disagrees. _She saved herself for you_, it shouts. _Not that you deserve it_, the self-hating faction of his brain adds, helpfully. 

"Ben?"

Everything gets quiet again. Or maybe it's just quiet relative to the way Rey is breathing—big heaving, irregular inhales and exhales that make her whole chest expand. It's the only sound he can hear and, really, the only sound he ever wants to hear again. 

Cradling her right leg in his left hand, just above the back of her knee, he rubs his cheek against the unbearably supple skin of her inner thigh. She bristles a little bit against the bit of stubble on his face and he starts to lay a delicate row of kisses leading upward.

He pauses, hovering over her, and it's darker than he'd like for this moment, but he would happily do this blindfolded. It all feels too fleeting and fast, like one of those dreams where you move from scene to scene too quickly. 

He lingers there, breathing against her, a little too long because she sits up a bit. 

“You don’t have to. I mean…" There's a catch in her voice. A nervous wobble.

“ 'Have to?' " He raises his head to look up at her, over the fabric of her dress. "You’re giving me a gift. You have no idea. All I want in the fucking world right now is to make you feel good." 

She bites her lip and exhales, setting her head back down on the seat.

"Okay." 

He twists around, grabbing the first thing he sees that can be rolled up—someone's suit jacket, carelessly flung over a seat back, _oh well_—and quickly folds it into a makeshift pillow before pushing it under her hips. If she sees what it is, she doesn't object. 

It feels like some kind of natural high, like he's taken the best uppers, ones that make his heart race a little bit, but not so much that he can't focus on the way the gossamer layers of fabric under her dress frame her from this angle. The tender skin at the apex of her thighs feels soft against his cheek and every little quivering movement she makes seems magnified when he's this close. 

It takes about a minute for her to make any sound. But eventually, little gasping breaths evolve into soft moans and she unclamps her fists from the fabric of her dress, reaching down to brush her fingers over his hair. 

There's never been a better sensation. 

"Ben!" she utters sharply, as he buries his head between her thighs. His name in her mouth makes him feel like he's the only man ever to exist. 

Rey's back keeps arching up over the seat and she's grinding against his mouth a little bit and it's probably just an instinct but he knows that she needs something more. He slowly presses a finger inside her and she tenses for a few seconds, holding her breath in, before relaxing around him. 

She's too shy to give him any words of feedback, but they develop a kind of understanding based on a combination of her little noises and the way her hips move and how firmly she tugs at his hair. She says his name when it's almost too much and pretty soon she's saying it a lot and louder each time. Her legs are shaking and he's trying to hold onto some semblance of restraint with his finger and his tongue and his nose nudging up against her, but he pushes a little bit, because _fuck_ she's so close and if he can just give her this right now, it'll somehow make up for a year's worth of terrible, selfish things he's done. 

"Ben? Ben....ah, _ah_, _ahh_, I think I-I'm—" Her voice breaks and he feels some little burst of energy surge through her, making her whole body shudder. 

* * *

Right after it happens, it feels like a particularly good dream. She's still gripping his hair as she catches her breath, but it's not like he's trying to move away, anyhow. 

It's in the minutes after all those feelings have made a couple circuits around her whole body that reality starts to hit. 

It's impossible to go back now. You can't let your singing partner do that to you and then go out on stage and perform "If I Were a Carpenter" on stage the next day like nothing happened. 

Not that Ben can play "If I Were a Carpenter" now. 

Not that he's even planning to stay. 

She isn't sure if that makes the whole thing easier or harder. Maybe after whatever happens next, she won't want to see him in the morning. Maybe it'll feel like a relief if he goes. If he disappears. Like the friction that's been getting under her skin and making her itch since the day they met might just lift away and make everything simpler. 

_Right_. _Very likely_. 

She hasn't been holding onto_ it_ for any special reason. It's not about God or being married. Or being afraid—even though she's still a little bit nervous about the things they haven't gotten to yet. Maybe it's like putting down a book at a really good spot because you're almost scared to turn the page and read the next chapter. Sometimes things don't turn out right in novels and you're left wishing that the characters just stayed forever in Chapter 10. 

After a few minutes—maybe it's a few minutes, but the whole inside of the bus seems to exist in a place where time doesn't work the right way—Ben finally pushes himself up, so that he's lying by her side again, kinda like how the whole thing started. Between the darkness and lying flat on her back, she hadn't actually _seen_ much. Granted, her eyes were shut pretty tight, too. 

He runs his fingers over the modest peaks and valleys of her chest, and if he's unsatisfied by anything that just happened—like how long it took or what she looks like down there—he doesn't let on at all. 

Rey doesn't say anything, either, because what in the world are you supposed to say after that?

_Thank you_?  
_Why didn't you tell me you could do that_?  
_I need more of everything that just happened and I need it _right now?

Rey doesn't feel like a totally different person. Just an altered one. And she's not sure if it's because Ben's special, or they're special together, or maybe there's nothing special about either of them and it's just the circumstance of being trapped together and letting a bunch of pent up frustration boil over. Could be that the exact same thing would've happened if she'd woken up and found Hux sleeping with his magazine falling out of his hand. 

The thought just about makes her snort. 

Maybe it is a little hard to imagine anyone else lying here, stroking along her ribcage, up the slight curve of her breast, to her collarbone and back down again. It's strange how natural it feels—it doesn't even tickle the way that it ought to. 

* * *

"Can I take this off?" he asks, pulling at the stiff outer shell of her half-undone dress. 

"Please." 

"Turn around," he says, with a slight nod of his head, and she sits all the way up and twists at the waist, turning her back to him. 

With his left hand, Ben grabs the little rounded zipper pull and tugs down, being careful not to catch the fabric. The material parts like the Red Sea in _The_ _Ten Commandments_. Han had taken him to see it years ago—his father's version of Sunday School—but this is a thousand times better. Her lower back gets revealed, inch by inch, to the base of her spine and then, well, _lower_. 

Rey crosses her arms and lifts the dress up and over her torso, tossing it over the back of the seat in front of them. 

And then it's just her. 

She turns her head to look over her right shoulder, a lock of hair barely covering her eye.

Which is good. It's a very alluring distraction to keep him from focusing so obviously on her ass. The empire waist dresses hide her shape too well—someone clearly told her the baby doll silhouette would help sell Sunshine's sweet innocence. He can't remember her ever wearing anything form-fitting enough to show off this particular part of her. 

"No one's ever seen me, um...you know…like this, at least." Rey's mouth twists adorably into a series of crooked lines and he's torn between reassuring her and expressing his eternal gratitude for bestowing this honor upon him. 

"Are you cold?" is what comes out instead.

"I should be freezing," she says. He reaches his good hand over to touch her shoulder. "I'm not, though. Just—" she tilts her head down and swallows hard "—shaking for other reasons."

Ben pulls at her shoulder and she turns forward again to face him. There are about a thousand things he means to say and they all get caught somewhere between his brain and his throat. He finds himself pushing the lock of hair away from her face, letting his palm rest against her cheekbone. 

"You're so—" he looks down into her eyes, so that there's no mistaking it, no way she can't understand it "—you're beautiful." 

She's facing away from the weak light streaming in through the window, but even in the darkness, he can see her face soften a little.

"I wanna see you too," she says, pulling at his sweater. 

He nods, dropping his good hand down to the hem.

"I might need a hand here—um, literally."

A smile spreads across her face, as she stands up in front of him and pulls his sweater and undershirt over his head in one fluid motion. 

"Dang, you really don't spend any time in the sun, do you?" She runs her fingertips over his—apparently very pale—skin, grazing across his moles and assorted imperfections, as he rises to his feet and undoes his button and zipper with his left hand. "I guess you'll get plenty tan in Califo—" 

He stops her with a kiss and she seems completely fine with having her observation cut off. His pants drop to the floor and he's left in his boxers, the thin cotton material straining against his plainly obvious erection. 

Rey moves her hand down to his waist and a little lower, pausing when her fingers brush up against the hard length that's been nudging against her. 

He draws in a choked breath. He doesn't want anything more in the entire goddamned world than for Rey to touch him. To _want_ to touch him. 

She glances down, before wordlessly tugging down on the elastic waistband of his shorts until they join the pants in a pile. 

He's pleased to hear her mumble a soft "wow" as she traces a line from the base to the tip with her index finger. 

Covering her hand with his—and once again, cursing his temper for leaving him without the use of both hands—he demonstrates the stroking motion, up and down the shaft. Of course, it's far slower and gentler than he does it in the privacy of his motel room, but she doesn't need to know that. And he doesn't really want anything more vigorous right now. Much better to take it slowly. 

* * *

_So...he's big._

Not that she's an expert on the subject, but—

_Yeah. _

_Big_. 

The size of his hands and feet should've been a clue. That's definitely a thing she'd somehow picked up from conversations with other girls. Or at least, from overhearing conversations other girls have with each other. 

Once, she'd read this book where the heroine called it "a steel rod covered in velvet." And even though it'd seemed strange and funny at the time, the description makes a lot more sense now. (To be honest, it's still kinda funny—not that this particular moment is the right time to laugh about it.) 

Really, there are maybe a hundred things Rey should be contemplating. Fretting over. Second-guessing. 

But for some reason, she finds herself returning to the _big_ thought every couple seconds. Maybe because it's so...evident. She can see it. Feel it. Good Lord, she can barely get her hand around it.

How on earth is she going to—

He takes his left hand off hers and tilts her chin up. Until that moment she hadn't even noticed that she's been looking down at her own hand stroking him. Staring, really. 

_Amateur_. 

Kaydel wouldn't need a tutorial. A band rat would be so good at this he would lose his mind. She's half-expecting Ben to laugh at her poor technique, when bends his head down enough to kiss her again. His good hand traces her collarbone, while his right elbow hooks around her side, pushing her right up against his chest and stomach. It feels so warm and safe and right that she forgets to keep her hand moving. 

If he notices, he doesn't acknowledge it. 

Breaking the kiss, he stoops slightly in front of the bench and picks up the wool blanket, wrapping it around both of them. 

"I think my theory was correct." He tugs the blanket tighter with his left hand, pulling her closer. "Fewer layers, more body heat."

She gazes up at him, noticing the way the light illuminates one side of his face, leaving the other in shadow.

"Anything to keep warm, right?" 

" 'Anything?' "

"Anything." She sounds more confident than she feels. 

Ben sits on the bench, using his left hand to pull her down, so she's straddling him with a knee on either side.

"I think it'll be easier like this," he explains. "To keep the weight off my hand."

It's funny—obviously, it can work this way, too. Rey just never pictures it like this. She always envisions the man—some tall, dark, _uh_, mystery man who is certainly not Ben Solo every single time—on top of her, pinning her down, controlling the pace, the rhythm, dictating the motion. Doing things _to_ her.

But something about being on top of him feels so natural. 

She still has the blanket hanging off her shoulders, halfway covering them, like a tiny plaid tent.

The way he gazes up at her is just a shade or two different than the way Kylo Ren looks at Sunshine every night. More intense. Knowing. Like he sees something that she can't when she looks at her own reflection.

"Tell me to stop, if you—"

Rey shakes her head resolutely.

"My whole life, everybody's always treated me like one of the boys. But when I'm on stage with you—the way you look at me...It's the only time I don't feel like someone's kid sister."

The expression on his face right now says everything she needs to know: all he sees is a grown woman.

It takes an attempt or two, and a little awkward fumbling, to get the positioning right. Once they do, Rey slowly lets herself lower down, grabbing his shoulder to steady herself while he guides himself inside her. Everything feels tight at first, like her muscles want to pull themselves taut and resist. 

He doesn't tell her to relax, thankfully. Instead he distracts her with kisses down her sternum and over her breasts and she's sweating, but somehow her nipples are the only part of her body reacting normally to the actual temperature. 

And Ben seems more than happy to warm them up. 

She makes a little inadvertent keening noise at the way he uses his mouth on her—the way it makes her head drop back. It feels wonderfully impure, like something a preacher would holler about. 

"Does that feel good?" he murmurs into her skin.

She nods against the side of his face, her chin bumping his ear. The fingers of his left hand dig into her back and pull her closer and she lets herself sink down a little bit further, pushing past her body's twinging resistance. 

Ben's breath stutters. 

It hurts a little, like a dull pinch, and she's glad he can't see her face because she's probably wincing. But after a spell, it doesn't hurt so bad. Something inside her relaxes and she finds herself exhaling for what feels like the first time in a full minute. 

She lets her weight rest on his thighs and he makes a little guttural noise when the muscles in his legs tense up and relax again a few times before everything seems to settle. Ben runs his fingers gently up and down her spine; she nestles hers in his hair, scratching along his scalp in a steady cadence. The flicker of the neon punctuates the darkness with the occasional strange burst of colored light.

They stay like that for awhile, which is also unexpected. For some reason, Rey had pictured sex as more of a "rapid movement" kind of thing—like bunny rabbits. Like an explosion of bottled-up energy. But this stillness is nice. It's luxurious, almost—being held this close, invited to stay in someone's arms, rest her head on a strong, broad shoulder. 

The last twenty minutes could provide her with songwriting material for the next twenty years. 

He slides his left hand down to her waist and thrusts his hips upward a little bit, making her stomach clench. 

"Is that—okay? To move?"

"Y-yeah," she stammers into his ear, as he continues a slow, steady pace, increasing the amount of force ever so slightly each time. 

Just as she's starting to work out how to move in tandem with him, she feels the rumble of his voice against her chest.

"Show me how you touch yourself."

Her head whips back up from his shoulder. 

"Huh?" 

"You touch yourself, don't you?" He gives her a knowing look. "I want to, but I'm down a hand, here. And I want to see you do it, anyway." 

He looks up at her with his big pleading eyes and swollen mouth, and it's not as if she can deny him anything now. Rey traces his profile with her fingers, moving between his eyes and down the ridge of his nose to his upper lip. He kisses her fingertips as she lowers her hand all the way down the sliver of space between their bodies, until she's grazing just above where they’re joined. It feels different like this, sitting up instead of lying down on her back in her nightgown. And being watched. And, _well_...everything else that's happening. 

It's almost hard to find the little spot at first, with all the distractions. It's not like pushing a clearly marked button. Ben kisses along her shoulder and up her neck and then he's whispering things about how good she is and how many times he's thought about her doing this exact thing, and asking if she ever touches herself while she's thinking about him.

And she wants to cry out _Yes—every single time!_ but the words feel trapped in her throat and the best she can do is nod and tighten her grip on his back. He thrusts a tiny bit harder and some tingling sensation blazes to life under her fingers, igniting a lick of fire that spreads up and down her limbs. The blanket must've fallen off her shoulders at some point, but she never felt it happen. 

It's so much _more_ than any idle fantasy her brain can spin up out of nothing. Her body throbs and pulses and aches and he's too much and too deep and there's an edge somewhere but she can't feel it yet. 

Maybe being on top of him makes her feel a little bolder—like she can set the pace, move with him or against him and squeeze a little bit. She can grab a little more control and he can become a little more helpless. The push and pull isn't all that different from singing together. 

There's only this tension that keeps swelling and fracturing a little bit, like a crack in a window. Every time she throws her head back and stretches her spine it feels like maybe it'll shatter, but it doesn't. They just keep building it up again together. 

She's moaning in a way that sounds an awful lot like a woman in the next motel room, and he's cursing softly under his breath. Rey wants to remember all of it for later—all the dirty words and praises and utterances that aren't in the dictionary at all—but it's getting too hard to think straight. 

"Are you—"

"Yeah," she says, nodding vigorously. "Yeah, I'm—I'm—"

He presses his left hand against the base of her spine, and she's not sure how he manages it, but suddenly her knees aren't digging into the seat cushion anymore and a half-second later she's lying on her back with her shoulders chafing against the vinyl upholstery. The whole thing's a lot more like the gauzy vision she'd had in her head of how this would be: Ben hovering over her, her calves hugging his sides, and the ends of his hair brushing her sweaty forehead. 

He's rocking into her with more urgency, less restraint. Her fingers are moving quick like she's strumming furiously, bringing herself so close to the brink. Everything's twisted and coiled, until suddenly she can't bear to hold on anymore. It slides out of her grip and everything unwinds in a crazy rush, leaving her trembling underneath him. 

Every part of her body feels like Jell-o that hasn't quite set.

It's wonderful.

* * *

Ben hasn't had much cause to concern himself with prophylactics on this tour. It's possible there's a rubber somewhere on this bus (actually it's more probable there's a discarded one lurking underneath one of the seats), but he hadn't had the patience or presence of mind to address the situation. And the leap-first, look-later nature of that decision means that he has to pull out at exactly the moment when his body wants to push in as deep as humanly possible. 

He does his best to avoid her body when the time comes, grabbing the closest receptacle that doesn't belong to either of them—the suit coat he'd balled up and shoved under her hips about ten minutes earlier. The release itself is pure, unfiltered relief. 

They're both sweating, but he reaches down to the floor for the blanket anyway. Maybe it's some protective instinct, some impulse to make up for everything this setting lacks.

To be fair, Rey might not have noticed anything that's happened in the last ten seconds because her eyes are unfocused, staring vaguely at the ceiling and her chest is heaving. He lies down next to her, arranging the blanket over both of them. His right hand is starting to ache, like his body suddenly remembered how to feel pain again. 

The faint neon light flickers over her delicate face and he can't stop himself from smoothing her hair a little bit. She looks utterly peaceful, but he doesn't want her to drift off into sleep. Not yet. 

Morning will come too soon and everything might be different. Every minute feels precious. 

He waits for her to speak first, but it seems to take forever, and his heart is racing and all the words he needs to say just tumble around his brain, waiting to come out.

His patience is rewarded when she finally parts her lips and says: 

"Oh my God."

Ben pauses, stifling the laugh he feels in the top of his chest.

"Let's not bring him into this," he replies, after a beat. 

The corner of her mouth pulls up into the tiniest little smile and she finally meets his gaze.

"Deal."

He rearranges himself a little bit, pulling her into an embrace with this left arm.

"Was it a lot like all the hundred times you imagined it in your head?" he asks, adopting a casual tone, as if his life doesn't depend on whether or not she regrets what they just did.

"No." 

It's all she says. 

But her smile gets a little bit wider.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want you all to know that I literally spent hours researching birth control and [condoms](http://blog.wellcomelibrary.org/2016/10/making-and-marketing-condoms/) in the 1960s and it was actually very interesting. 
> 
> Pantyhose became very popular in the 60s because of mini-skirts, so by '69, I think it's safe to assume Rey would be wearing them. I also looked into the underwear or no underwear with pantyhose debate and could not find a definitive answer! But supposedly they were developed to be a combination of a "panty" and "hose."
> 
> [ Valley of the Dolls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_of_the_Dolls) and [1960s Gothic romance novel covers.](https://t.co/dXSgCTdh1e?amp=1)


	8. dedicated to the one i love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They did it. Now what?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I ended up splitting this chapter in two parts, because it came up long when I edited it. The last (I mean it!) chapter is ready to go and I'll put it up within a couple days of posting this one. Thanks for your patience. This fic takes forever to write and edit because I can't write in my natural voice, but I'm doing my best!
> 
> Songs: 
> 
> [ Dedicated to the One I Love](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4M7gKZqgHn4) and [ California Dreamin'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN3GbF9Bx6E), The Mamas and The Papas  
I've definitely had The Mamas and The Papas on my brain with this fic and I want to recommend this episode of [You Must Remember This](http://www.youmustrememberthispodcast.com/episodes/tag/Cass+Elliot) about Cass Elliot.  
[ When You're Next to Me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMbeMmYkAXQ), Mitch and Mickey (aka Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara)

Rey always goes out of her way never to step foot in the tiny bus bathroom, knowing what the boys get up to and how the sink doesn't work, and the fact that she's never—_not once_—seen anyone clean it. But tonight it feels like a godsend. Probably helps that it’s too dark to see much of anything. 

Ben's pulling his boxer shorts back on when she steps out, letting the narrow door swing closed with a loud thwack. It's both a bit of a relief and a slight disappointment. 

"Do you want to get some sleep?" he asks, snapping his head up.

“No!” It comes out a touch too eager for her liking. “I mean, I can’t really imagine bein’ able to fall asleep right now. Little bit wound up.” _To put it mildly_. “Always have trouble sleeping anyway.”

“Yeah. So do I.” His voice has the same shades of nervous tension as hers does. 

She's never slept—_just slept_—with anyone before, either. Not like this. 

He's cleared everything off the seat, aside from the blanket and a pile of their coats that he seems to have arranged as a makeshift pillow for two.

It kinda looks like a bird's nest.

The cold air raises goosebumps all over her arms and legs—and parts she didn’t even know could get goosebumps. Just seeing Ben in some very small amount of clothing makes her feel more naked. Or maybe it’s because he’s looking up and down her body as she sits back down on the bench, tucking her legs under the blanket. 

Something in her stomach flip-flops as she lowers herself down onto her back and he rearranges the blanket to cover both of them. The wool feels scratchy against her skin. She hadn’t noticed that before, in the heat of the moment.

Strange how it feels an awful lot like it did an hour ago when they started sharing the blanket—and yet, it's completely, utterly, amazingly different.

"Do _you_ want to sleep?” She tries to remember what people in her paperbacks do afterward. _Why don’t they show this part?_ “Do you usually go right to sleep?" 

"No. Well, not that there's much of a 'usually,’ ” he admits. “But when it happens, I play it back in my head and go over all the things that might have gone wrong and that keeps me wide awake for most of the night."

She can't quite tell if he's kidding.

"Are you doin' that right now?" 

"No." His lack of hesitation sure doesn’t escape her notice. 

"I suppose I don't really know enough to guess at what I did wrong, anyhow."

"Nothing. You didn’t do anything wrong.” He smooths his left hand across her unruly hair. “Are you, um, feeling all right?"

The question instantly prompts a bit of panic: _Do I look ill? Am I burning up?_ But then she catches his meaning. 

"It, ah, kinda pinched some—" Rey watches the concern wash over his face "—just at first, I mean. But no more than I reckon it's supposed to."

He exhales loudly—not quite a sigh of relief, but close.

“So, did you...like it?”

" 'It?' " 

"Making love."

Every ounce of blood in her veins seems to rush to her cheeks when he says it like that: all matter-of-fact and forthright. At least in the dark he can't see how bad she's blushing.

“Yeah," she says softly. "Thought you could tell.” He looks down, like he's trying to hide a smile forming. "I, um—” she swallows hard, feeling her whole face heat up “—really liked it."

"Me, too." A quiet little hint of satisfaction prickles at the back of her neck. "That’s an understatement. Obviously.”

Ben sits up a bit more, reaching behind his back and patting his hand on top of his coat until he locates one of the pockets. There’s a muffled little rattling sound and Rey holds her breath, even though she doesn’t mean to. 

But his hand emerges with a pack of Parliaments, rather than a bottle of pills. He taps the box against the seatback, before holding it out to her like an offering. 

“Thanks,” she says, pulling one of the identical white sticks from the package and sliding it between her lips. Rey's not much of a smoker, but it’s something to occupy her hands. Better than twisting them up in the blanket. 

The flame from his lighter illuminates the space between them, shining a yellow gold light across the planes of his face. It’s not quite as romantic as a candle, but it’s nice for the couple seconds it lasts. 

Rey could look at that face for a good long while. In all kinds of light.

She takes a drag as Ben lights his own cigarette, and the hot smoke fills her lungs, making her feel warm again for the first time since they—well, _did it. _

_We did it_. She turns the three words over and over in her mind until they lose their meaning. 

Or, more accurately, until she notices that the other half of the _we_ is keenly focused on her neck and chest, and she glances down self-consciously.

“What? What is it?” 

“Tomorrow might be a good day for you to wear a turtleneck," he says. Rey puts her hand up to her throat. “I got kind of, uh—carried away.” 

She can't help touching above her collarbone and pushing down a little bit on the bruises. It's a good kind of soreness—all that evidence of being wanted.

The feeling makes her shift a bit to the right, a little closer to Ben, and let her shoulder press against his chest. Seems like a thing people do...after. Maybe he likes it, too, because he moves an inch or two to the left. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she spies the black and white marbled cover of his composition notebook, peeking out of his other pocket, like a tantalizing mystery. 

She takes another long inhale. 

The smoke from both of their cigarettes gently swirls upward into the cold, stagnant air, one cloud twirling little tendrils around the other. 

"Think you'll write a song about this?" He carefully knocks the ash off his cigarette onto the floor. 

"I guess it depends what happens in the morning. The best country songs come from heartache, so...” Rey lets the silence linger, just to test him a little bit. He doesn’t make a sound. “I got a feeling it's not gonna be a duet."

She feels the muscles at the base of his throat contract as he swallows. 

"That depends on you, as much as me."

"I already told you what I'm doin' here."

"Yeah." He takes another drag. "Well, I'm thinking about the future." He blows the smoke straight up. 

"Running away," she mumbles. 

There’s nothing to fixate on but the occasional bit of highway noise.

They smoke in silence for awhile, until Ben stubs out his cigarette against the metal window frame and lets the filter drop to the floor.

Then he reaches the fingers of his good hand over the crown of her head and lets them run through the little snarls, smoothing them out a little bit. Rey lets her head hang back and closes her eyes.

“Why does that feel so good?” It's like cool, silvery droplets running down her spine.

“Lots of nerve endings. Intimacy." His hand just feels so _big_ across her scalp. "Maybe you just like it when I touch you.”

“Don’t stop,” she breathes. Goosebumps reappear in full force across her forearms. 

“Just wait until I can use both hands.”

“On my hair? Or...other places, too?"

His mouth presses tantalizingly against her ear. “All of it.”

A thrilling little swooping sensation shoots down to her belly. Rey hasn't ever wanted to feel helpless, but the very thought of his hands makes her pulse race. 

"It’s funny. I've never much appreciated men touching me. I mean, it looks nice in movies and stuff. But in real life?" She makes a sour face. "Lots of men don't treat their own wives right. I guess that's why I admired your folks. Just seemed like they loved each other so much, even if they bickered some. Listening to them felt like a little piece of hope—proof that there’s true love out there, even if I couldn’t see it with my own two eyes."

Ben draws his head back a bit and lets out an incredulous little snort. 

"So you believe in fairytales?"

"Did I say something stupid?" She shifts forward, pulling the blanket up a little higher across her breasts like she’d just revealed too much. 

"No,” he says firmly, pulling her back into his chest. “No, that's exactly what you're supposed to feel about them. Sorry, I’m—fuck, I don't want to be the one to ruin that for you."

"Just be honest with me." She turns her head back to look at him. "I like knowing the truth about things." 

She feels him take a few deep breaths. 

"They lived apart. For the last ten—no, maybe fifteen—years." Rey's kinda glad he can't see the way her face falls. “Han wasn't—" he pauses, breathing out again "—he wanted to be out on the road. A wife and kid might've slowed him down for a couple years, but it didn't last. Love doesn't make people change who they really are. Maybe it makes them feel guilty about it for awhile, but they don't actually change.” 

Ben continues combing his fingers through her slightly-tamed waves. Maybe it's soothing him as much as it is her. 

"And your mom?"

“Leia isn't exactly the settling down type, either. She was perfectly content spending her evenings holding court at Tootsie's, while Han was out on the road, doing God knows what." 

Rey feels a little crease forming above her nose, despite her best efforts to maintain her composure.

"They weren't in love?" she asks, holding her voice steady, as if he's not casually tearing down several years of elaborate fantasy stories about a beautiful country music princess and the dashing scoundrel who stole her heart. 

"I think they always loved each other. Just…in their own way." Ben inhales sharply and adjusts his posture. “They’d fight all the time, but they never talked anything through. Some argument would come up, one of them would get mad and take off to Acapulco, the other one would fly somewhere else. Then in a week or two they’d get back together, nothing solved. They’d act like it never happened.”

“What about you?”

He sighs. 

“Nannies, boarding schools, summers with my uncle, pulling me into their act. The occasional military academy. Every rich kid cliche you can think of.”

“I never knew any rich kids.”

“If I keep talking about this, you're going to want to break one of those windows and escape."

"No," she says, looking down her handkerchief still wrapped securely around his right hand, wondering how deeply he believes what he’d said—that love really can't change who someone is at the core. "It's not in my nature to run away." 

* * *

Ben pulls out another cigarette, but doesn’t light it. 

"Han arranged for the plane because of me. I wouldn't shut up about how awful the bus was. When I refused to get on the flight, the last thing he called me was ‘ungrateful.’ " He turns the cigarette over with his second and third fingers. "Snoke forced us to continue the tour right after the crash. The rest of us, I mean. That's when everything went to shit. I mean, worse than it already was. I didn’t sleep for days. When I needed to stay awake to drive seven hours to the next gig, he got me a bottle of black beauties. And if I couldn’t wind down at night, he was right there with the benzos. I’d swallow anything in order to force the sleep and forget all of it for a few hours.” 

He flips the cigarette around and around. It's almost mesmerizing. 

Rey remains perfectly still. There’s only the sound of her careful, shallow breathing. 

So he continues: 

"Sometimes I think Snoke only keeps me around out of spite. He missed out on twenty more years of Han touring. Now he’s just wringing the last shred of profit out of anyone with the last name 'Solo.' He sends me one syrupy ballad after another. Never lets me record any of the songs I wrote. Tries any fucking gimmick out on me, just to fuck with whatever credibility I have left.”

Rey sits up a little, putting an inch or two of space between the two of them, and turns her head so she can see his face.

“Like playing duets written by a perky girl singer?”

“Something like that, yeah. He has creative methods of torture.” He stops fidgeting with the cigarette and looks at the perfect curve of her back. “I doubt this is what he had in mind.”

"How come you didn’t you up and leave months ago?"

He can’t help tracing his index finger from the nape of her neck all the way down to her tailbone. She still trembles a little bit when he touches her.

"I guess—” his throat tightens “—it’s not that I thought this would—" She raises an eyebrow. "I mean—performing together is... that’s why I’m still here." He glances at the bus ceiling and then down again. "I stayed because of you." 

It's silent enough that he can hear her swallow.

"Feels like my whole life I had the opposite effect on people."

"When we sing together, it’s like—like I’m living in those songs for two minutes. I can fool myself into believing that someone would…" The words suddenly sound too desperate, so he abandons the train of thought. "I couldn't make myself leave."

Rey twists around a little further until her lips graze his cheek. He waits a second too long before turning his head for a real kiss because she abruptly shrugs off the blanket and swings her feet around to the floor. 

Ben watches as she takes a couple steps to the right, leans down, and picks up something dark off the grimy carpeting. 

"Are you sayin'—" she stands up straight again; his sweater is hanging from her right hand. "—That you like singing with me? That it makes you..._happy_?"

"I don't think I could pick happiness out of a lineup." Rey puts her arms inside his sweater and slips it over her head. It’s long enough to be a minidress on her—_a rather tasteless minidress_—but he's momentarily overwhelmed by the sight of her wearing his clothes. It's possible that he _can_ distinguish that particular emotion. "But something like that," he says, in a barely audible voice. 

Maybe she hears. Maybe she doesn’t.

She sits down next to him, lowering her hand onto the pile of coats they’ve been leaning against. A moment later, she lifts it back up with his notebook resting in her palm. 

"Can I? Please? Unless it's a bunch of poems about how awful I am."

Mostly out of instinct, he reaches for the book, but she quickly pulls it back. 

“Rey—”

"Is it a bunch of wild ramblings from your beatnik phase? Some of your 'workin' man' material?” He reaches around her, to no avail. “Lyrics about being locked up in the county jail?" 

Ben's not proud of resorting to tickling—in fact, he can’t remember the last time he tickled anyone—but desperate measures and all that. Once he has the notebook back in his hand and Rey is clutching her stomach and doing some adorable combination of laughing and panting, he's suddenly overcome by the urge to give her all of it. Freely.

“You want me to burn it?” she asks, after he places the notebook in her lap and hands presses his lighter into her palm.

“Your eyes are good enough to read in the dark?”

"Oh." She presses her lips together and opens the cardboard cover. "I mean, I've seen you, uh—naked. How much more revealing could this be?"

Ben feels his eye twitch.

He glances over her shoulder as she turns the pages, one by one, tracing her fingers down the paper, holding the lighter's little flame up to the book, but not close enough to burn. There's an exhilarating little shiver shooting down his spine, watching her touch such a private object, handling it like it's precious.

"These are love songs," Rey says quietly. "Since when do you write love songs?" She turns her head to look up at him. 

"None of these are finished, anyway."

She sits up a little taller, leafing back through the notebook and holding it open in front of him. "This one could be a duet."

The scribbling on the page is familiar: two months worth of ink smudges, crossed out tabs, and nearly indecipherable margin notes. 

"That one's missing some lines. And part of the bridge."

"Hey." She leans over the edge of the seat and pulls at the handle of the guitar case he always shoves underneath, because he refuses to keep his Martin in the stowage compartment with everyone else's instruments. "Will you play it for me?"

“No.” Ben holds up his right hand. "But you could."

"And you sing?"

"If you want."

He watches as she undoes the latches and lifts the guitar out of the case by the mahogany neck, treating it with the kind of care one might reserve for a newborn baby. 

"Gosh, it's beautiful." She runs her thumb down the glossy spruce front, which he'd had customized with an amber sunburst finish. "Feels nice."

"She's got a big, firm low end," Ben says, laying his notebook on the seat in front of her in a patch of faint moonlight. 

"Always wanted to play your guitar, if I'm bein' honest." She cups her hands and breathes into them to warm them up a little.

Rey wearing his sweater—and _only_ his sweater—while holding his favorite instrument in her lap is enough to make him forget all the tarnished, gnarled pieces of his life. It's more calming than whiskey, a bigger rush than pills, and more satisfying than smashing things. 

“The intro is C-F-C-G three times, and then C—”

“Jesus, Solo, I can read letters. You got nice penmanship, by the way.” She gives him a close-lipped smile. Her nimble fingers slide down the strings and she strums through the simple chord progression a couple times before settling on a picking pattern.

After the third bar, Ben takes a deep breath, opens his mouth, and lets the lyrics pour out in front of another person for the first time.

"_When I'm standing next to you,_  
_There's a song to sing, _  
_I know everything's feeling right._"

He continues with the verse, blushing slightly at an unfinished line about steeple bells ringing. 

"We'll come back to that one," Rey says, completing the bar and smoothly picking up the next line: 

"_When I hold your hand in mine_—" 

She nods at him to continue.

"_Children's dreams take flight, _  
_Through a starlit night,_  
_That's what I see._  
_When you're next to me._"

Rey's gentle playing trails off on the C chord. She nudges his leg with her bent knee.

"That's real pretty." 

"It's not really a country song. But I tried to write something that sounded like...you. I guess. You could add some twang to it. Maybe an autoharp." 

"Maybe. But I like it simple like this, just acoustic guitar and a voice. Or two. Maybe a brush on the drums. Nothing _complicated_." Her eyes glide down his face to his chest. "Maybe I'm rubbing off on you."

"In the best possible way."

Her right hand drops away from the strings and, with the way she's staring at him, he's almost tempted to toss the guitar and his notebook to the side and send his sweater flying over the seatback. But it's such a goddamn pleasure watching her play _his_ song on _his_ guitar, that he clears his throat and suggests they figure out the bridge. There'll be time for the rest of it, later.

"What about... F to—" she plays around a bit "E minor? No." She picks around a bit more. "A minor?" She nods to herself. "And then back to C, I think." 

"Try A-flat on the next line," he suggests, closing his eyes in concentration, tapping into years of scales, chords, and arpeggios.

"Oooh." She strums the transition a few times. "I love it. And then C to G to resolve." 

He hums through a bar of unwritten lyrics as she plays the chords from the top of the bridge, before picking up the next lines. 

"_You can mend the darkest hour, _  
_With glo-o-oh-rious light_."

Rey rests the notebook on her knee and jots down the changes. 

"And then back to the verse," she says, before tapping the capped end of the pen against her lips. "We just need that first lyric to the bridge." She pauses thoughtfully, scratching something down across the lined paper.

She sets the notebook back down and Ben glances down at what she's added, in her uneven cursive. If there's a slight pop in his chest at these particular words, it's not as if he can help it.

"Take it from the last line of the verse?"

"_...that's what I see,_  
_When you're next to me._"

Rey adds a little ornamental flourish going into the bridge, before joining him with an improvised harmony.

"_This love for you I'm feeling,_  
_Has a power that is healing,_  
_You can mend the darkest hour, _  
_With glo-o-oh-rious light._"

She slows her picking down to a stop.

"Maybe we _can_ write a song together," he says quietly "We just had to—"

"—take our clothes off?"

"—get some things out in the open..." He flicks the lighter on and off. "That, too." 

"Another line or two, and it's done. You can take it with you to Los Angeles.” She picks out the Spanish guitar intro to _California Dreamin_._’ _ “Play it on street corners for loose change."

"So you _do_ know other kinds of music,” he points out, grabbing the neck of the guitar and lifting it out of her hands. As soothing as it is to listen to her, the D-35 is getting in his way now.

Rey shrugs. "I turn the dial on the radio now and then." 

“You should take the song. Just don't sing it with Dameron."

She watches as he places it back in the case, with noticeably less care than she'd used to remove it.

"I don't think I'd be able to play it with another person,” Rey admits, closing his notebook. She idly draws an invisible circle around the white _COMPOSITION BOOK_ label with her index finger. “It'd just make me feel lonesome. Dunno how that's possible when I'm stuck with a pack of feral men all the time. Sometimes bein' around them, I feel more alone than when I'm all by myself in my room at night."

She traces around and around the oval until Ben flattens his left hand over hers, forcing her to look up.

“Rey...you could—”

"Why'd you wait so long to let me see this part of you?" 

Her eyes scan back and forth across his face.

"I didn't think you'd...want this." _This_, meaning the notebook, his feelings, and literally everything that had happened this evening. "Sometimes it feels like I'm—I've always been too much for people." _Too tall, too intense, too needy, too ready for a fight._ "If someone actually scratched against the surface of who I am, it would slice me wide open. I'd start bleeding and I wouldn't be able to make it stop."

Rey slides her hand out from underneath his and places it over the cavity where his heart is working harder than it has in years. 

"I did a fair job nursing your hand, though, didn't I?" He feels immobilized as she climbs into his lap, adjusting her bare legs and sweater-covered arms until they form a tight unit with his body. "The thing is, I _know_ who you are now."

She holds onto him—digging her fingers into his shoulders like she's afraid someone's about to haul him away. 

"Tell me who I am," he whispers.

How did he exist in the world for thirty-odd years believing that he didn't want this, let alone deserve it?

"You're a short-tempered, spoiled-rotten, sensitive-as-hell, wide-as-a-church-door, _romantic_." She bends her head down at just the right angle to rest her forehead against his. "And you're mine."

* * *

They fit. 

Even his sweater feels more like it's hers than the dress she'd been wearing all night. 

They should be all tangled up limbs and bumping noses—the awkward, unsynchronized movements of two people who barely know each other. Who've kept each other at arm's length for months. They should be fumbling and apologetic, like a couple on a blind date trying to dance together for the first time. 

They _should_. 

But instead their bodies seem to dovetail. 

He cups her cheek in his left hand and searches her face like there's an answer written there in invisible ink and he's so close to being able to see it. 

Rey's never been anyone's answer. She's always felt like more of a problem—a stubborn dandelion growing in between the sidewalk cracks. There's a song lyric in there. She turns it over in her head: something about how a man can make you feel like a rose...or a lily. Except Ben doesn't make her feel delicate. 

He just really thinks this particular yellow dandelion is beautiful the way it is. 

She tilts her head to the right and leans in, shutting her eyes and waiting for a faint tickle of breath against her face, followed by another gentle ki—

“Want to run away with me?” 

She pauses for a moment, before opening her eyes and pulling back an inch. 

"What?" 

His hand strokes against her jaw.

"Don't you want to see the ocean?" When she doesn't respond, he presses. "Make a fresh start?"

Whatever serene music she'd been hearing in her head seems to skip, as if the needle hit a speck of dirt on the vinyl. 

“_This _is my fresh start.” She leans back another inch. "I've been working my whole life just to make it to Nashville. Record my songs. Get on the radio. Maybe get to the Grand Ole Opry someday."

“The Opry?" He rolls his eyes. "They don't even believe in drums. Don't you want to be more than a carbon copy of Loretta Lynn? Or Dameron’s kid sister? Jesus Christ, you don’t have to be Sunshine.” He grabs at her shoulder with his right hand with almost frantic energy, before realizing his mistake and grimacing in pain. “Fuck," he mutters under his breath, shaking it out and collecting himself. "You can just be Rey. Write the feelings you actually have, not the ones you heard my parents sing about ten years ago.”

Her eyes start to sting a bit and she's not sure if it's because she so sure he's wrong, or because he might be a little bit right.

“Or you could stay," she ventures, casting her gaze over his shoulder and blinking away the start of any possible tears. “Just a little while longer. It wouldn’t hurt anything.” 

"I'm not staying on Dameron's tour or this goddamn label." He tips her chin back toward his face so that she has to look him in the eye. "I made up my mind. I'm not doing it." 

There's a stubborn finality to his tone and she's too proud to pout about it, so they just sit there, on either side of some invisible line in the sand.

After what seems like at least a minute of frustrated breathing and late-night winds whipping angrily at the windows, his large, cold hand meanders under the hem of the sweater. 

"Just think about California," he says, in a more honeyed voice. The way her heartbeat is already thumping twice as fast as it should as his fingers make their way over her right hip means that he's definitely found an unfair way to bolster his side of the argument. "We can get on a plane tomorrow."

She's never been on an airplane. Never even seen one in person.

His sweater is warm and soft and still has a trace of Agua Brava laced in the knit, but she helps him lift it over her head anyway. 

"What's one more week on the Midwest circuit, though?" she offers, weakly. 

Rey feels her shoulder blades inching back, ever closer to the vinyl seat, pulling him down with her. She can't honestly say which of them is responsible. 

"I can't play anyway. This is the right time to go." He pulls the blanket over both of them, kissing down the side of her neck. "Don't you want to do this somewhere warm?"

_Dammit_. She kinda wants to do this anywhere, but _warm_ sounds especially good. 

"Tour's gonna go back down south after Christm—_ohh..._"

* * *

"Rey." He shakes her shoulder as gently as he can. 

She's not the daintiest sleeper, as it turns out. It's not really physically possible to stretch out on the bench seat, but she's managed to claim most of the width and a rather unfair proportion of the blanket. 

Not that Ben minds. He could actually watch her sleep for a long time, with golden bands of warm light streaming in from the windows, illuminating the left side of her peaceful face.

But the sun's up, and he can't imagine Dameron will wait too long before smugly returning to the bus like a hunter checking on his trap. 

He shakes her a tiny bit more vigorously and Rey finally stirs, rubbing her slightly makeup-smeared eyes and looking momentarily surprised to see him. Maybe all the daylight makes her shy again because she pulls the blanket a little tighter around her chest. 

" 'Morning, Sunshine."

A month's worth of recollection sweeps over her face in three seconds.

She pokes at his stomach, making him flinch. 

"Just checking that I'm not still asleep. What time is it?"

"Not sure. I neglected to wind my watch last night." Her fingertips against his skin are exactly the kind of distraction that had caused him to forget.

"Um," she clears her throat, "how's your hand?" 

"Fine," he says, even though it aches terribly when Rey grabs his right wrist and examines the bandage

"Liar." 

She pulls at his shoulder to make him lie back down next to her. No one's ever tried to snuggle up with him before.

"Rey, we can't—" His body betrays him by easing into a reclining position at her side. "We need to get up."

"For those early birds?" God help him, she wraps her leg over his. "Could be hours before one of 'em stumbles out of his motel room."

"We should pick up our things. It's a mess back here.”

“Right.” She kisses down his jawline. “ ‘Cause it was clean as a whistle yesterday and someone nicknamed ‘Possum’ might notice the mess.”

_Dammit_, she makes excellent points first thing in the morning.

“And put our clothes back on." 

“Is that really what you want to do right now, Solo?”

_Fuck, _no_, it isn't._

She nuzzles into his neck and moves her mouth down his chest and holy hell, is she persuasive. 

"That door could open any moment,” he manages to point out in a choked voice.

“Fine with me. Let them find us here. Just like this. Don't you want to see the look on Poe's face when he finds me on top of you?" 

And that's what stops him cold.

“The look on his face will last about three seconds, and I don’t want you living with the consequences for the rest of the tour.”

“I don't care.” She lifts her head up defiantly. “I want them to know!”

“You think it’s hard being a woman on the road with a dozen animals, wait until they find out about this.”

“As if they haven’t been picking out girls to sleep with at every damn stop.” She shifts off of him, throwing the blanket around her shoulders.

“It’s different for you and you know it," he insists, sitting up on his elbow. "They've been leaving you alone because they don’t think you...do this kind of thing.” 

“I don’t.”

“And after I’m gone, you’ll never hear the end of it. It’s not right, but that’s how it is.”

Her expression is pure disappointment. And even though he's spent his entire adult life making terrible, reckless decisions for himself, he's not going to let Rey make impulsive mistakes.

She looks him square in the eye, as if to test his certitude. He doesn't blink. 

"So we get dressed," she says, with cold resignation.

"We clean up. You go back up to your seat. We act like nothing happened." He glances down at her neck and shoulders. "Make sure you have your coat zipped up all the way." 

"And after that?" She snatches up her dress and her ruined pantyhose. 

"When we get to the theater, I'll tell Ransolm I need to get my hand looked at. And then I'm leaving. Maybe you are, too." 

He gives her a hopeful sort of glance, which is not quite reciprocated. 

"I told you last night. I've worked hard for this. To get here. My parents aren't listening to music from California."

"Your parents aren't—" he pauses on the precipice of something that feels dangerous "—that's not a reason to stay. You said you wanted to know the truth about things?" He's never been able to stop swinging at a thing until it's properly broken. "That's the truth. They abandoned you years ago. They don't get to dictate the rest of your life!" 

Rey's entire head jerks a half inch backward like she's taken a sharp jab to the face. 

"You don't know that." Her eyes glisten as she tightens her fist around the shiny fabric of her dress. "You don't know a thing about that." 

_I wish I didn't_, he thinks, picking up the defiled suit coat off the floor and laying it over the seat back, where he'd first found it. 

* * *

After what feels like over an hour of terse, silent waiting, there’s a hard, metallic clanging against the side of the bus.

Then, a delicate click. 

Eight feet in front of him, Rey is curled up in her usual seat. Nothing is amiss, except for the cracked window and his pitiable hand.

The door slams open. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song in this chapter is a Mitch and Mickey song from [A Mighty Wind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mighty_Wind), written by Mr. Rose himself, Eugene Levy! I love the bridge to this song. It feels so reylo to me, so I really wanted to work it in. 
> 
> There is a bathroom on the bus that I semi-based this bus off of. It belonged to Elvis and it had a full shower. I figured some of you would be concerned about about this, so I wanted to mention it!
> 
> Look at this amazing [history of composition notebooks](https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/the-complicated-history-of-the-beloved-composition-notebook/)!
> 
> I thought a lot about cigarettes and I just headcanon that Ben would smoke something kind of random and aristocratic like Parliaments. 
> 
> A little part of the Han/Leia story — the bit about Acapulco — came from someone's reminiscence of Tammy Wynette and George Jones. Their relationship was WILD. And "possum" is George Jones' nickname. I thought it was fitting. 
> 
> [Tootsie's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tootsie%27s_Orchid_Lounge) is/was a pretty famous Nashville hangout and I think I read something about Patsy Cline kind of being like a queen there. 
> 
> The [Martin D-35](https://www.guitarplayer.com/guitaraficionado/working-mans-dread-martins-d-35-turns-50) wasn't a particularly fancy guitar, but was purportedly Johnny Cash's favorite and kind of a "working man's" instrument. It's actually called a dreadnought!


	9. it would be just like spring in california

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We've come to the end of the road, folks...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for so much for reading and your patience as I figured out how to write something outside of my comfort zone and my usual style. 
> 
> Thank you to [delia-pavorum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/literaryminded/pseuds/delia-pavorum), [selunchen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/selunchen/pseuds/selunchen), and [bazineapologist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BazineApologist) for listening to me gripe about this fic for several months. 
> 
> And thank you, thank you, thank you to  
[bless_my_circuits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bless_my_circuits/) for such an awesome prompt, that I'm not sure I actually fulfilled, but it was an _adventure_ anyway.

"Good morning, lovebirds! We gettin' along a little better today?” Dameron moves his eyes between Rey and Ben, like he’s watching them play a game of invisible ping pong. “First thing I need to know is which one of you put that crack in the window on my bus door? Little Miss Sunshine here had one hell of a temper yesterday. I thought for sure we'd come back and find Solo with a black eye."

"You're lucky you didn't come back and find us dead from hypothermia," Rey mutters, softly enough so that Ben can barely hear it. 

"Now, now." Captain Charm bends down to retrieve a crumpled up piece of paper from the floor. "It was well above freezing, Sunshine." 

He smooths out the note he'd defaced, while giving her an unsubtle once over. It must’ve been the only piece of debris they neglected to pick up.

Rey extends her hand, blocking his path down the aisle. 

“Can I have my letter back?” It's technically a question, but her tone is more demanding, than inquiring.

Ben leans slightly forward to catch more of the exchange.

"Thing is, I have a longstanding policy that newcomers need to go through a little _ritual_.” He lowers himself down onto the seat next to her, pushing into her personal space, using the letter to poke at her arm as he accentuates his points. "And yesterday happened to be the night y’all fell asleep a little too early. I know you don't want to be treated any differently than the guys. Do you?"

"No.” She snatches the letter out of his hand, with a little more vigor than necessary. “You know me. Just one of the boys." 

Ben watches him nod approvingly, oblivious to her acidic tone. 

"Say, did you manage to get any sleep?" 

"Not much,” she answers honestly.

Rey pulls her coat a little tighter around her torso, and Ben is once again torn between wanting that smug bastard to see her neck and knowing what a terrible idea that would be. 

"Dang it. Well, maybe you can catch a nap after the matinee." Dameron leaps back to his feet. "Thing is, I _knew_ Solo wouldn't actually _do_ a damn thing. But I’ll bet he was giving you a piece of his mind all night." 

Ben notices the corner of her mouth curve up the slightest little amount. Or, at least, he thinks he does.

"Somethin' like that," she agrees, even though he hadn't bothered waiting for her answer. Like some crafty animal stalking his prey, Dameron ambles down the aisle toward the rear of the bus, with a couple of his bandmates filing aboard after him. She steals a glance at Ben's careful, expressionless face, which is probably occluded by a thin cloud of cigarette smoke. "Actually, I think we came together on a few things."

He nearly has a coughing fit, as Dameron cocks his head to the right and looks down at the handkerchief bandage.

"Jesus, Solo," he says, with a shake of his head. Ben takes another drag on his cigarette, blowing the smoke vaguely in Dameron's direction. "Looks like the door won," he observes, as he reaches for the suit coat, draped limply over the back of the seat in front of them.

Rey catches Ben's eye, and the owner of the jacket misses the knowing look that passes between them: a pure little moment of human connection. They let it linger until Rey forces her gaze back to the front. 

And then it's over.

Sometimes that's all these things are meant to be: sublime and fleeting. 

Because if he really considers it in the cold light of day, the truth is that following him could be a terrible mistake. It reads like a cautionary tale on the back of one of her paperbacks: "_A promising young singer's career is derailed after a romantic entanglement with the wrong sort of man!_" 

There's no proof that he can be the _right_ kind of man—the person she writes her songs about. He might be able to play him for two or three minutes at a time, but what happens when all the old demons claw their way to the forefront? 

Nightmares don't suddenly stop when someone tells you it's not your fault. 

You don't wash your pills down the drain just because a girl loves you. 

Not all of them, anyway.

No, he has to admit that he still feels a sense of relief that the bottle is safely tucked away in his coat pocket.

He’ll probably need it later.

Hux stretches out and yawns on the seat in front of him. Maybe he’s Nashville’s most mediocre guitar player because he gets so little sleep at night. 

After several long minutes of grandstanding in front of his hangers-on—during which, the others seem to accept at face value Rey’s insistence that they simply slept in separate seats, to an almost _insulting_ degree—Dameron finally takes a seat. Naturally, he selects the one next to Rey and he sits facing the aisle, so that she's not included in their conversation, while also being blocked from moving anywhere else.

To be fair, there’s no reason she’d want to chime in to this scintillating discussion about the merits of various cup sizes. 

The bus lurches forward, headed toward the civic center or county auditorium, Masonic Temple, or wherever the hell they're booked today. 

It's not that Ben's trying to stare at her. He's just facing forward, same as always. He can't exactly help it if his eyes rest on her profile—the way she watches the dreary Michigan landscape pass, blowing out a big breath every so often. 

If he pictures her peering through a little round airplane window, her nose pressed up against the thick glass, well...everyone's entitled to a little bit of hope, aren't they? Even him. Hadn't last night proved that ridiculous miracles happen every so often? 

Maybe that’s why he’d torn a page out of his notebook, folded it up, and snuck it in her coat pocket when they were putting their clothes back on. 

Anyway, _she's_ the one who keeps turning her head back to catch his eye. She's done it about half a dozen times. 

Until Dameron turns his attention back to her. 

"Well, the thing is, hon, Solo can't play on that hand. So we'll figure out something for you. Think of it like a promotion. Gettin' called up to the majors."

The thought of him taking all of her raw talent and moxie and absorbing it into his corny pre-packaged brand of showmanship until she’s just a girl holding a tambourine and singing “ahhh”s in the background of his manufactured, corporate-approved singles...it makes him want slam his hand into the door and shatter it this time.

With a little flourish, Dameron stands up, flipping his suit coat around. 

"Well, I gotta say, I'm a little dissatisfied by the results of my chemistry experiment." He slides his right arm into the sleeve. "But I guess Solo never did want to follow directions." He shrugs his other arm into the coat. "God, will ya look at that?" he says, doing a half-turn and admiring his reflection in the windows. "Polyester is such a fuckin' miracle on the road."

* * *

One of the nice things about being the only girl on tour is that sometimes Rey gets an actual dressing room to herself. Of course, sometimes, in a pinch, it's a janitor's closet. But this one has one of those mirrors with the round light bulbs on the sides and it makes her whole face shine in a way that doesn't match the tight, churning wave of nausea she’s tried to ignore for the last hour. 

He’s not here.

No one's come to knock on her door to tell her, but she knows. It’s that sinking feeling, deep in the pit of her stomach. She's all-too-familiar with it.

There's a copy of _Cosmopolitan_ strewn across the counter, with an eyeliner mustache drawn over the model's upper lip. 

Rey picks it up.

The model's face is bright and glowing, aside from the extra facial hair. Her breasts are glowing too, and Rey pictures a makeup artist applying light, shimmery powder to the perfect cleavage poking out of the plunging neckline. This is a woman who doesn't need to stuff her bra with socks. 

Fashion magazines always feel like they're written in some kind of slang no one ever taught her. She leafs through the pages, skimming over stories that seem utterly foreign (_Jobs for Bored, Restless Young Housewives_, _A Cosmo Girl's Christmas—Beauty, Food, Decorating, All to a Man's Taste_), worrisome (_How to Be His Last When You're Not His First_), or personally insulting (_Raquel Welch in Fantastic Holiday Fashions_). 

But it's an ad that stops her cold. Cheryl Tiegs, on horseback, looking somewhere in the distance, with her blond hair blowing gently, but not covering her face. An array of brand new peachy-colored lipsticks and powders are carefully arranged in the sand. Rey tells herself that it's Cheryl's orange scarf that catches her eye and makes her linger on the page, not the words "California Girl by Clairol." 

"_Makeup that lets you look like a fresh air fiend,_" the heading promises. "_The Sunshine Makeup comes in every vim-and-vigor shade under the sun. Puff on a little Unshine Powder. Powder off with a Sunshiner Lipstick or Gloss—you'll look like you just licked a fresh fruit popsicle. Meanwhile back at the ranch, take care of your complexion with our lotions, potions, and treats. They help your skin look great—like fresh air and sleep. That's what California Girls are made of_."

Tossing the magazine aside, Rey observes her too-brightly-lit reflection. She half-heartedly runs her fingers over cheekbones that don’t look anything like "fresh air and sleep." Certainly not after last night. Half her mind tries to cast herself as a breezy, potions-and-lotions California Girl, while the other half screams that it's a silly detour. Somewhere out there, her parents are still listening to Poe Dameron croon about pretty, big-boned gals in honky tonks. 

Believing that has gotten her this far, at least. 

She hasn’t managed to take off her coat just yet. Yanking down the zipper to reveal all the unmistakable evidence of last night seems like a thing that could just about push her over the edge. So Rey balls her hands into tight little fists and shoves them in her pockets.

_Thirty seconds and then I’ll open my makeup case. _

_Thirty seconds and I’ll at least_ think_ about opening my makeup case._

Her knuckles brush up against something smooth and pliable and flat in her right pocket, and she grabs it in between her fingers and pulls it out. 

Neatly creased, lined paper. Thick. Soft from months of being scrawled on and turned over. Better quality than the hotel paper she writes letters on. 

Rey forces herself not to picture him carefully removing it from the notebook—the tear is almost as clean as a cut.

His song. Their song?

It hurts just looking at it—his cursive and her not-quite-so-refined lettering mingling together on the page. It's a shame no one'll ever hear them sing it. Not together, anyway.

The best thing to do is push Solo completely out of her mind. Treat the whole thing like some kind of fever dream. A sad radio song come to life. She can perform her simple tunes with anyone—he'd said as much, himself. 

There'll be other chances to see the ocean. 

Someday. 

* * *

"Solo’s not here, darlin.’ And I don't expect he'll be back.” Rey stares blankly at Poe as she shuts the dressing room door, while he tells her information she already knows. “But I've already got it all planned out for you.”

“I'm all right singin' by myself, so—”

“Tell you what, kiddo. You could just do a couple songs on your own. That'd be...just fine." He throws his arm over her shoulder, walking her toward the wings. "But let's make lemonade, here. You go out there and sing something that'll tug at the heartstrings a little bit. 'The Ways to Love a Man,' maybe. And try and look real sad about it. ‘My man done me wrong’ and all that. Then we go for the knock out. You follow it up with ‘Take Me.' ”

“Oh, that’s a duet—”

“You’re gonna sing it all by yourself. Both parts. Couple little tears." He stops to brush his thumb across her cheek, while she flinches. "See, you’re already doin’ it. And then stop before the end of the last refrain, like you can’t bear to go on." 

"I d-don't think that's—"

"I’m gonna walk out from the left side over there. You turn on the waterworks, if you can. We'll finish the song together. Maybe you swoon a little bit, nice and subtle. And then we’ll sing one of mine. They’ll eat it right up.” He hugs her to his chest a little too tightly. “Welcome to the Charm Offensive, Sunshine. I always wanted a girl backup singer.”

Rey holds her breath until Poe's a safe distance away, filling in Ransolm and Hux on his plans, while Snap strides out onto the stage. 

"How're y'all doin' this fine afternoon? It's fantastic to be here in Michigan!" he shouts, into a microphone perched on a stand all dressed up like a candy cane. There's an uninspiring smattering of applause, as the band gets set up. "Is it true that folks here shovel snow to make room for more piles of snow?" 

Snap goes for cheap pops with his fill-in-the-blanks local material, while Rey tries to ignore the way her heart is pounding. It's never thumped like this before a performance. Of course, she's never gone out there all alone—not that Ben ever delivered pep talks before their sets. But she'd give anything for him to be standing next to her, with his guitar slung across his back, working his jaw back and forth, adjusting his stupid hat while they wait for their cue.

She hadn’t anticipated that Snap would introduce “Kylo Ren and Sunshine Jones” like he’d memorized a five word announcement by rote months ago and couldn’t make a single adjustment, no matter the circumstance. 

Gulping in a breath, Rey makes her way to the candy cane microphone stand, while Snap immediately takes off, probably reaching in his inner jacket pocket for his flask before he's a foot off stage.

“Afternoon, folks,” she says, stepping into the hot spotlight, wondering if the marks on her neck show through her less-than-thorough makeup application. 

“Where’s Kylo?” a man’s voice yells from somewhere.

“It’s, uh, just me today. Kylo’s, um—” she squints at the confused, upset faces in the crowd. Had Poe told her how to explain it? Had they gone over this part? “Well he…" 

There's a faint _boo_ or two rippling through the crowd. 

"I'll be yer boyfriend!" another deep voice shouts. 

There's a distinct bead of sweat forming on her hairline as she adjusts the mic stand a little lower.

"But I’m real glad to be here with y’all.” 

The spotlight feels like it's burning her skin. 

Ignoring the tittering from the audience, she launches into “The Ways to Love a Man,” which forces her to sing lyrics about how "quickly he can slip through your hands" and "one little thing goes wrong, then all at once he's gone." 

Funny how she'd written those words without ever understanding just how deep they could cut. 

Her speaking voice shakes when she tries her hand at some stage banter, but none of her usual bits work without Ben there to be the straight man. She looks helplessly at Hux, who pretends to be completely immersed in adjusting one of his tuning keys. 

The crowd hums with restless energy, so she gives up on the talking and announces that she and the boys will be playing "Take Me" next. Her hands grab at the stiff fabric of her dress like they can't help themselves, as the all-too-brief intro rings out from behind her. 

She's never sung it without a partner—never sung it facing the audience, rather than gazing up at a six-foot-two man in a cowboy hat. 

"_Take me,_" she warbles, in the biggest voice she can muster.  
_Take me to your darkest room, _  
_Close every window and bolt every door—_"

Lyrics about being "in darkness no more" feel awful coming out of her mouth. Ben's half of the verse sounds flat-out wrong. And Hux doesn't remember not to change the key for a baritone singer who isn't there, and the pace feels sluggish and almost sickening. A funeral dirge.

Even though she’s staring at a theater full of people—all with the same expression of concern mixed with pity on their faces—all she can see in her mind’s eye is Ben, slouching in the back of the bus, giving her this look. This "I've _seen_ you. I _know_ you" kinda look. 

“_Take me—_"

Or gazing up at her with awe and almost disbelief, cupping her cheek in his hand and then touching her everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. With— 

"_To Siberia—_" 

—his hands... Ben on top of her, inside her, making her feel _everything_. Every single little thing she'd ever written about without ever really knowing what it felt like. 

"_And the coldest weather of the wintertime—_"

She shivers a little bit at the fragments of memories that come bursting back to life in her mind. Somehow their edges are already getting singed and burnt away with every passing moment.

"_And it would be just_—"  
_Oh God_. She'd forgotten this particular line.  
"_—like spring in C-Calif—_”

Rey’s voice hasn’t ever failed her while she’s in the middle of a song, but her lungs just give out, like a truck stuttering to a halt along the side of a lonely dirt road. No sound’s coming out at all. 

Hux and the boys are still playing haphazardly, slightly out of rhythm with one another, apparently unsure of what to do. The dramatic moment's not supposed to happen until the second repeat of the verse and, with the spotlight in her eyes, she can’t see where Poe is supposed to be waiting in the wings—if he's even ready to walk out on stage. 

The crowd—an sea of muted blacks and dark, shadowy grays—gets louder and louder. It's not just murmurs, but individual voices poking through the din. 

She clutches her skirt tighter in her fists, as her eyes well up again. Somewhere, deep in her chest, a giant sob threatens to erupt. 

Rey doesn't see the blur coming toward her from the right at first, but she notices a couple people in the audience pointing in that direction. 

_Poe_? She squints. _Thank God._

Blinking rapidly does nothing to tame the tears, so she turns her head up stage, away from the crowd, and desperately wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand in a way that’s not at all ladylike.

It doesn't do much good either; there's still a watery film over the world in front of her.

The dark, Poe-shaped blur has a guitar strapped to his back. She can make out the outline of his hat as he takes big, purposeful steps toward her from the right side of the stage. Almost a kind of strut. Except wasn’t he supposed to enter from the left? 

_And since when does Poe Dameron wear a hat on stage?_

She's blinking like crazy as he gets closer and closer and the hollering from the audience starts to become more like a roar.

Maybe she can't see clearly, but she feels _him_ next to her: the little electric hum that flows and crackles between them every time. Like the pop and hiss of a well-loved record spinning on a turntable.

“_And it would be just_—" 

It's not Poe's voice. There's only one man in a million that sounds like that.

"—_like spring in California,_"

The tears spill over her lower lashes, leaving warm tracks down her cheeks.

"_As long as I knew you were mine._"

Finally she can see him, standing a couple inches away from her, gazing down into her eyes, his strong features cast in shadow from his hat. But she can still make out a look on his face that she couldn't hope to describe in ten whole bars worth of lyrics.

So _this_ is what it’s like when someone comes back for you.

He leans in further, until his mouth is dangerously close to the microphone, and Rey can't help but tilt her head up and push in a little bit, too, letting the hem of her dress brush against his pants.

Maybe it's pure instinct, having done this part a hundred times before, but she breathes in and finds her voice again. 

"_Take me,_" they sing in perfect unison.  
"_Take me._”

Hux's guitar reverberates in the still air; it sounds particularly ethereal today.

A thousand bewildered people gape at them from the dark auditorium, hanging on whatever’s about to happen next. From somewhere in the crowd, there's a light cough.

Ben is breathing hard, with his dark whiskey eyes focused on hers in a way that makes the entire planet fade away. 

His head angles ever so slightly to the right, just out of the way of the microphone screen.

Then down a half inch. 

And down a little further. 

And—

Rey opens her fingers, unclenching her fists from her dress. Hands shaking only a little bit, she reaches up, almost to his temples, and grabs the brim of his hat, lifting it off the crown of his head and flinging it into the crowd in one swift movement. 

"You're late," she says, as he blinks in surprise. Her voice echoes through the speakers.

Ben's eyes rapidly move back and forth across her face, which feels like it's changing its expression every second or so. 

"I'm sor—"

Rey doesn’t need to hear the rest. Her hands find his cheeks, bearing an extra day’s worth of stubble, and before she can give it a second thought, she's yanking his head down that extra half inch. His lips—warm and familiar and insistent—find hers, and this time there’s no clumsy smashing. That’s what a night of practice will do. 

He properly takes her in his arms—being mindful of his right hand—and she feels her shoulders tip backward at an angle that’d feel dangerous if any other man was holding her. 

Rey can’t rightfully say she’s ever been weak in the knees before this moment. It’s like every corny, romantic song she’d ever sighed over and tried to rewrite in her own words.

Except this is about a hundred times better because she doesn’t need to imagine it. She doesn’t need to put herself in some other girl’s nicer shoes and make believe for three minutes. She doesn’t need to tap her pen against a motel notepad, picturing what’d it be like to have her tall, taciturn singing partner sweep her up in his arms (_all right, his one good arm_) and kiss her until her lips look bee stung. 

It’s probably a bit indecent for an afternoon show, but Rey has a feeling their tenure with Captain Charm’s tour is coming to a close, anyhow. 

Might as well go out with a bang. 

At some point—maybe it’s fifteen seconds later or just as many minutes—they come up for air, accompanied by a chorus of hoots and hollers. Somewhere out of the corner of her eye, Poe Dameron stares daggers at them, with his hands on his hips.

"See how much easier that is without a hat?" she says, just a little louder than a whisper, catching her breath. “You came back.”

“I’m so fucking in love with you. I couldn’t—”

Rey grabs hold of his tie and tugs down until they’re kissing again. 

“Are you ever going to let me finish a sentence?” he asks, covering the microphone with his left hand.

She shakes her head. “No one’s ever been in love with me before. I got no idea what I’m doin.’ ”

“Me, neither.” 

He has this incredulous sort of smile on his face and Rey spends an extra few seconds admiring all the little details in his expression. All the little things that add up to a perfect swell of emotion. 

But he steps back up to the mic before she can capture the whole snapshot.

"Ladies and gentleman, I apologize for being tardy this afternoon." Ben lifts the leather strap over his head and places the neck of his guitar in Rey’s left palm. It feels heavy and solid in her hand. “Folks, this is a new song. We just finished it last night, as a matter of fact."

"Technically, we finished this morning," she adds, sliding the strap over her shoulder and running her thumb across the dark, glossy finish. 

"And Sunshine is gonna play it for us." Ben tilts his head away from the microphone once more. “Remember the lyrics?”

Rey twists a little bit so she’s facing away from the audience, before tucking her hand down the neckline of her dress and into her bra. It’s immodest, but she’s also never claimed to possess fine manners. 

He watches with curiosity as she pulls out a neatly followed notebook page. 

Handing it over to him, she whispers, “Doesn’t work as good as socks,” before arranging her fingers around the neck of his guitar. “I just might run away with this thing. And its owner.” 

Ben gives her a look that makes her wish they were huddled under a blanket inside a dark bus rather than standing, fully clothed inside a bright spotlight.

On the other hand, it’s really nice to see his face, all lit up. 

"I promise I'll never leave you hanging again, Sunshine."

* * *

> **GRAND RAPIDS—**The Michigan leg of Poe Dameron’s start-studded tour promised some holiday surprises, and boy did the so-called “Charm Offensive” deliver. The show got off to a rousing start with tinsel-tinged set by Luke Skywalker's former backing band, The Porgs. Dallas disc jockey Snap Wexley let loose with a Christmas-themed variation on last hit's summer smash "Snappin’ It!," reworked as “Wrappin’ It!” The ever-capable "Captain Charm" didn't disappoint, playing a rollicking set that highlighted his extremely confident allure. 
> 
> But perhaps the act that caused the biggest sensation was the are-they/aren't-they sweethearts Kylo Ren and Sunshine Jones, who treated the Michigan crowd to an absolute doozy of a smooch, before debuting a brand new song, "When You’re Next to Me." The intimate, folk-infused tune featured Miss Jones playing a pared-down guitar arrangement while harmonizing with Mr. Ren, who appeared to have a bandage on his hand. A rep for New Empire had no comment on what might presumably be the duo's next single.

> **CLEVELAND—**After setting off country music fireworks at the December 17 matinee of Poe Dameron's star-studded tour in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the twosome of Kylo Ren and Sunshine Jones were conspicuously absent from the evening show, and indeed, have missed subsequent engagements the following three nights in Cincinnati, Canton, and Columbus. 
> 
> During a recent appearance on WKYC's Country Jamboree to promote his upcoming stop at Cleveland's Public Music Hall, Dameron declined to speculate on the whereabouts of his tourmates. 
> 
> "I say it every night, Cal, it's never a dull moment. Part of the problem with having a girl singer around, right? You put a rooster in with a hen, she stops laying eggs." Despite Mr. Ren and Miss Jones flying the coop, Captain Charm seemed to have no worries about filling the gap. "The tour can get along just fine with more Poe Dameron. Better, in fact."

* * *

"Holy—" Rey has her nose pressed up against the thick double paned glass of the little rounded window. "Look at those mountains."

She elbows Ben in the ribs and he closes the copy of _Valley of the Dolls_ she'd forced him to purchase at the airport bookshop. She's poked him about a dozen times, mostly to point out clouds. But peeking over her shoulder, he has to admit that the view from where he's sitting is pretty spectacular.

They hadn’t gotten on the plane right after the show. As much as Ben had longed to take a cab directly to the airport, there was someone Rey wanted to see in Detroit. 

And it turns out that there are plenty of very nice hotels there, with fluffy pillows, crisp sheets, and room service—and thicker walls than the motel rooms they'd grown accustomed to on the road (although the guests in the neighboring room had seemed to disagree). 

Ben had insisted the expense was worth it because he could write it off as a business expense, due to the number of new song ideas they’d generated. 

They’d held three days of _very_ productive songwriting sessions before booking the flight. 

It's the first time in over a year that he hasn't popped a handful of Valium in order to get on a plane. He’d thought maybe he'd need to be the one reassuring Rey—but everything is a delightful novelty to her, from the compartmentalized tray of food with tiny salt and pepper shakers, to the stewardess' colorful uniforms. She's even thrilled at every nauseating bit of turbulence. 

None of it should come as a surprise. It's not as if he's even known her to be afraid of anything.

She holds his hand anyway. 

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A [closer look at the important part of that last image](https://i.ibb.co/GQbfZbR/Screen-Shot-2020-03-04-at-7-34-31-PM.png) since I had a fairly low res copy of 1970 Billboard to work with. 
> 
> Here, look at the cover of the [December, 1969 issue of Cosmo](https://i.ibb.co/NCt1bgd/f8ca02ed996a06f9c0abdae7b1b75d38.jpg)! And this [Clairol ad](https://i.ibb.co/pwLjmNh/d9d12a3a1b906f92daaffb95a2240bfe.jpg)!
> 
> I welcome your headcanons as to what these kids did next!

**Author's Note:**

>   
\---
> 
> Come say hi on [twitter](https://twitter.com/kategoldbeck) or [instagram](https://www.instagram.com/kategoldbeck/). For information and updates about my forthcoming novel, see: [kategoldbeck.com](http://kategoldbeck.com) and sign up for my mailing list.


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